Medical Directives for Adults and Children
by Patricia R Voss on 02/28/19
An
unexpected medical emergency can happen to anyone at any anytime. Whether due to an illness or as a result of
an unexpected circumstance, situations occur every day which render persons of
all ages incapacitated and unable to make decisions for their own health
care. Advance Directives is a group of
documents that allow you to give someone the legal authority to make medical
decisions for you, access your medical records, and carry out your instructions
with regard to the types of medical treatment acceptable to you in an end of
life care situation.
The
documents that makeup these Directives consist of a:
1)
“Designation of Health Care Surrogate” ( see
Florida Statutes for a suggested form ), the document which allow the
person you designated to make medical decisions for you and can include HIPPAA
release language unless a free-standing HIPPAA release document is also being
executed (HIPPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act
which is a federal law that protects the privacy of a person’s medical records);
2)
A “Living Will” ( see
Florida Statutes for a suggested form ), the document that includes types
of medical treatment you would or would not want in the event of you terminal
illness, end-stage condition or being in a persistent vegetative state
condition. Since tragedy does not discriminate and there is rarely advance
warning about when a person will become incapacitated, obtaining these Directives as soon as possible is
critical since without them, then you have no control over who will be the
person tasked with making life and death decision on your behalf during a time
of incapacity or near death. This could potentially mean that someone you don’t
trust, or even a guardian appointed by the Court, could be appointed to make decisions
on your behalf.
In
addition, anyone who is the parent or guardian of a minor child, should execute
a separate Designation of Health Care Surrogate for a Minor (see
Florida Statutes for a suggested form) in order to authorize another adult to make
medical decisions on behalf of your child in the event you (and anyone else
with legal authority over your minor child) should become unable to make such
decisions. Keep in mind that once your child becomes a legal adult, your adult
child should also execute his or her own Medical Powers of Attorney in order to
grant you or whoever they wish, the authority to make medical decisions on
their behalf in the event of any incapacity.
Although
you will always be your child’s parent, once a child becomes legally
emancipated or attains the age of majority, you no longer have the same legal
rights to make medical decisions simply by virtue of the fact that you are the
parent. Therefore, whether an adult
child goes off to college, takes off for a gap year, or continues to reside at
home, adult children also need Advance Medical Directives in order for another
person, including a parent, to make health care decisions on their behalf in
the event of incapacity.