California Medical Decision Making Forms: Advance Directives, DNR and POLST

Deals with both California advance directives and other powers of attorney. Discusses both the practicalities and ethics of powers of attorney. Available in print and to UCLA Law users through CEB OnLaw. (Follow catalog link.)

This book is intended as a self-help guide for laypeople, but does a good job of referencing the relevant California statutes.
In plain language, it walks users through how to create and Advance Health Care Directive, Durable Power of Attorney for Finance and pre-hospital Do Not Resuscitate Orders/POLST forms. The advance directives chapter includes sample statements about how a person might wish to express their wishes.

Patients increasingly demand a voice in making their wishes known at critical points in their medical treatment, and today these wishes are often spelled out in great detail. Do not resuscitate orders, advance medical directives, pain management options are some of the medical choices patients can express through legal instruments such as a living will, or by designating a health care proxy, so that these choices are clear in the event that the patient cannot express them himself. Legal issues concerning a medical providers failure to carry out a patients wishes, religious objections to executing the living will, capacity issues such as age and mental competence, informed consent,right-to-die legislation, and prohibitions against assisted suicide are also covered here. Important topics discussed include living wills and a durable power of attorney. The patient's right to refuse medical treatment is examined,including advance medical directives, health care proxies, do not resuscitate orders, and the patient's right to pain management.
Contents Include: Chapter 1: The Patient's Right to Participate in Health Care Decisions Chapter 2: What Is An Advance Directive? Chapter 3: The Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Chapter 4: Landmark Right-to-Die Cases Chapter 5: The Patient Self-Determination Act Chapter 6: The Uniform Health Care Decisions Act Chapter 7: Physician assisted Suicide Chapter 8: Anatomical Donations Back matter: Appendices; Bibliography; and Glossary Appendices: The AMA Statement on Withholding or Withdrawing of Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment; Sample Do Not Resuscitate Order; Release from Liability for Discontinuing Life-Sustaining Procedures; Informed Consent Agreement; Sample Living Will; Table of State Living Will Statutes; Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care; Sample Living Will with Health Care Proxy; The Patient Self-Determination Act; The Uniform Health Care Decisions Act; The Oregon Death with Dignity Act; Patient Request for Medication Under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act; Attending Physician's Compliance Form Under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act; Statement Regarding Anatomical Gifts; Sample Organ/Tissue Donor Card.

Gives background on health care directives, including some common problems and pitfalls that occur in creating and honoring directives. Discusses alternatives when there is not directive. Has chapters covering client issues, and the perspectives of: attorneys, health care providers, and family and friends. Includes a chapter on involving clergy and spiritual advisors.

In the quarter century since the landmark Karen Ann Quinlan case, an ethical, legal, and societal consensus supporting patients' rights to refuse life-sustaining treatment has become a cornerstone of bioethics. Patients now legally can write advance directives to govern their treatment decisions at a time of future incapacity, yet in clinical practice their wishes often are ignored. Examining the tension between incompetent patients' prior wishes and their current best interests as well as other challenges to advance directives, Robert S. Olick offers a comprehensive argument for favoring advance instructions during the dying process. He clarifies widespread confusion about the moral and legal weight of advance directives, and he prescribes changes in law, policy, and practice that would not only ensure that directives count in the care of the dying but also would define narrow instances when directives should not be followed. Olick also presents and develops an original theory of prospective autonomy that recasts and strengthens patient and family control. While focusing largely on philosophical issues the book devotes substantial attention to legal and policy questions and includes case studies throughout. An important resource for medical ethicists, lawyers, physicians, nurses, health care professionals, and patients' rights advocates, it champions the practical, ethical, and humane duty of taking advance directives seriously where it matters most-at the bedside of dying patients.