Legal
Advance care planning
Advance care planning is a process for assuring that a person's wishes are carried out if he or she becomes incapacitated due to health conditions. A person considers his or her values about the end of life, and discusses those values with family, health care providers and others who are important in their lives. They then complete documents that record those decisions for the future. Click here to read frequently asked questions about advance care planning in PDF format. This FAQ is also available in Spanish
Texas law provides a number of useful advance-planning tools. Three standard forms, known as advance medical directives, provide direction for medical professionals and family members who may have to make critical decisions regarding treatment, resuscitation, disposition of property, and other matters. An attorney may be helpful when completing advance directives, but standard forms are available to anyone and, when properly completed, are legally valid. Advance directives, which may be revoked at any time, include:
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The Medical Power of Attorney
is used to designate a trusted person who can make medical decisions and communicate
with doctors should one become incapacitated. -
The Directive to Physicians and Family or Surrogates
is a written statement to family and physicians that can prohibit or
authorize the use of particular life-sustaining medical treatments when a person's
condition is terminal or irreversible. It allows a person to put into writing
any kind of medical care they want to receive or decline when they are expected
to die soon. -
The Out-of-Hospital Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR)
instructs emergency medical personnel and other health care professionals
to forego resuscitation measures in an out-of-the-hospital setting.
The letters PDF or symbol
indicate a document is in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). To view the
file you will need the Adobe®
Reader® which is available for free from the Adobe web
site. You can also download the free Acrobat
Accessibility Reader for PDFs.
Updated: November 2, 2007
