Advance Directive

 

Whether you are undergoing a low-risk minor procedure or a major operation with significant risk, it is always best to be prepared for a scenario in which you may not be able to communicate your preferences to your caretakers. This may serve you well in situations other than planned surgery. Here are some resources in preparation for the possibility you may not be able to communicate your health care wishes at the end of life. Adults should complete all four of these forms, which may take as little as 5 minutes.

Some important concepts:

If you are competent to make your own decisions, you may do so, and your expressed decisions trump any advance directive.

An Advance Directive is a way to indicate what you would want done if you are unable to make your own decisions. There are four types of Advance Directives provided by Illinois law:

  1. A Durable Power of Attorney (“proxy” or “agent”) is someone you chose to make your health care decisions if you become unable to do so. You should print and complete this form to identify a Durable Power of Attorney.

  2. A Living Will is a document that declares your statement that, if your medical condition is incurable and irreversible and your death appears imminent, the people taking care of you should not not delay your death through death-delaying measures. If you wish to have a living will, print and complete this form.

  3. A mental health treatment preference declaration lets you specify your wishes for times when you may have a mental illness and are unable to make these decisions for yourself. You should print and complete this form this form in case a mental illness prevents you from making decisions for yourself.

  4. A Practitioner Orders For Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) is an advanced directive that indicates whether cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) should be used if your heart and/or breathing stops; it can also be used to record your desires for specific life-sustaining treatment(s) you do or do not want used, and under which circumstances. If you chose not to be resuscitated, called DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), this form allows you to specify that desire. You should print and complete this form to specify your preferences for or against life sustaining treatment.

Here is a more comprehensive document explaining these advance directives for the state of Illinois.

Here is a web page from the Illinois Department of Public Health on this topic.