Question

1. What is a health care directive?
2. What happens to patients that do not have advance directives?
3. When a patient changes his/her mind about the choices they have made on an advance directive, what should they do?  
4. What is the difference between a "Living Will," a "Will" and "Living Trust?"
5. What is an Agent in the context of an advance directive

Answer 1

Healthcare directives refers to the power given by a patient to another person to take decision on medical treatment when they are not capable of taking decision being comatose or mentally unsound.

A patient who doesn't have a living directive can make the patient's family members in a critical situations in making decisions on healthcare when they are sick.The hospital is forced to go for a legal help in making high end decision like life support, enf of life care, procedures, surgery, etc.,

In these cases the patient has to get into the website and make changes and review it periodically.This is usually done with the treating provider or with healthcare professionals in regards to his decision. Otherwise it is valid for a couple of years until reviewed.

Living will refers to the wish of a patient on medical treatment when they are not sound minded or in a critical situation and cannot talk about it.

A will refers to a form of written information by a person about their assets and how it has to be distributed to the mentioned persons.

Living trust refers to the patients transfer their assets into a trust and they acts as trust maker and the money is spend for their needs

An agent is a person who makes decision on behalf of a patient who can be a member put of the family