Make your health-care needs known

Dec. 03--Shelbe King, the vice president of in-home operations at Freudenthal Home Health, remembers working in the emergency room when a mother and father were brought in after a horrible car accident.

The father unfortunately passed away, but the mother of 12 survived, relatively unresponsive. The accident prompted each of her children to come to the hospital regarding decisions that needed to be made for her treatment, as she had failed to fill out an advanced directive: Paperwork that informs caregivers of what to do regarding a variety of health-care and life-sustaining technologies while also supplying them with a power of attorney.

King sat down with all of the children, pulled out posterboard and did her best to manage 12 separate opinions. It's a story she tells often during her free class "Be Effective With Your Directive."

"The advanced directive is kind of like the north star for a family member or friend to know what to do for someone that can't make decisions for themselves anymore," she says. "... If you have strong feelings about life-sustaining events and whether or not to have them, you definitely want to have that in writing."

The advanced directive King uses is a double-sided sheet of paper. On one side is the health-care proxy, also known as the health-care power of attorney.

"This is somebody that you want to name that knows you and loves you and that you trust completely, because they're going to be making decisions for you, and you hope that they make them similar to what you want," King explains.

The other side of the advanced directive is a living will. This refers to life-sustaining treatments such as feeding tubes, breathing machines and dialysis. Much like health insurance, you can choose what you want and what you'd rather forgo.

"I think sometimes when people think of advanced directive, they think, 'Oh my gosh, the doctor's not going to do anything for me.' That is a huge misconception," King says. "The advanced directive has you write what you want and what you don't want, but when you go to the hospital, the doctors are going to do everything possible for you until they get to a point where they feel like, 'OK, this person can't make it without this life-sustaining treatment.' That's when they go to see if you have an advanced directive.'"

You can fill out an advanced directive at almost any time. And if you have strong feelings about what you'd like done in unfortunate situations, King definitely encourages filling one of these sheets out.

Home health agencies, doctors and hospitals can give you information on how to get an advanced directive. However, King recommends you make sure it has a stamp of approval from a bioethics committee and make sure not to sign it unless a notary is present.

Daniel Cobb can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowCobb.

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