Advance Healthcare Directives Advised

Instead of avoiding the inevitable concept of death, you should complete an Advance Healthcare Directive. This document allows you to authorize someone to make healthcare decisions for you if you’re too ill to make important decisions. The directive has to be notarized and be witnessed by two witnesses to be valid.

Another document to consider is a Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment. You can designate whether you want to be revived or receive other life sustaining procedures. For both forms, you should be sure to keep an agent informed of the directives you want to take effect if you’re ill and where the directives are located. Additionally, you should be sure to include adequate information in each directive so your wishes can be carried out properly.

See Steve Lopez, Matters of Life and Death: Having to Thing About the Unthinkable, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 14, 2011.