About four in ten people have known a friend or relative in a coma or suffering from a terminal illness in the past five years – a situation that often prompts discussion of end-of-life care. If you were incapacitated in some form, would your loved ones know your wishes? It’s a scary scenario, which is why medical professionals say it’s so important for you to have an advance medical directive.
“Everyone over the age of 18 should have an advance medical directive,” says Heather Stock, Palliative Care nurse at SSM St. Clare Health Center. “The main purpose of the directive is to allow you to provide guidance to your loved ones and care givers about how you want to be treated if your health condition keeps you from speaking for yourself. It is one way to ensure that your wishes and values about living and dying are known and honored. ”
An advance medical directive, or AMD for short, can be as simple or complex as you’d like to make it. It gives you the opportunity to create the vision for how you would be cared for in the future especially if you were to develop a chronic illness, be severely injured or become unable to make decisions for yourself.
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“It will allow you to state in advance your wishes for health care treatments you want or don’t want, such as breathing and kidney machines, feeding tubes and CPR,” Stock says. “You also will be able to express your thoughts about managing pain, where you want to die, and if you want to donate your organs or tissues after death.”
Everyone who is admitted to a SSM Health Care hospital is asked if they have an advanced medical directive. If they don’t, they will have the opportunity to complete one free of charge. A member of the Pastoral Care team will visit with the patients to discuss their wishes and help them complete the form.
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Nationwide, fewer than 50 percent of severely or terminally ill patients studied had an advance medical directive in their files. And only 12 percent of patients with one, had discussed it with their doctor.
“I have helped care for patients with and without a health care directive, and many times when they don’t, the family is left to wonder what their loved one would have wanted,” says Stock. “For those patients who have the advanced directive, it makes it much easier for their loved ones, because they will know it is what the patient had wanted.”
It also is possible for you to rescind or change your AMD at any time. Your decisions might be different, for example, if later in life you are diagnosed with a chronic illness. At that point, you could amend your AMD to include your new wishes.
“It is better to have one on file that you can amend as you progress through life than not have one at all,” says Stock. “Something can happen in an instant that would limit your capability to speak for yourself, and without a directive your loved ones and care givers may not be aware of what medical treatments you want and don’t want.”