Advance Directives
You have the right to say yes or no to treatments recommended by your physician. If you want to control decisions about your healthcare even if you become unable to express them yourself, you need an Advance Directive. North Carolina has several ways for you to make a formal advance directive. These options include a Living Will, a healthcare Power of Attorney, and an Instruction for Mental Health Treatment.
A Living Will is a legal document that tells others that you want to die a natural death if you are terminally ill, incurably sick, or in a persistent vegetative state from which you will not recover. In a living will, you can direct your physician not to use heroic treatments or extraordinary measures that would delay your death, such as breathing machines (respirators/ventilators), or to stop such treatments if they have been started. You can also direct your physician not to begin or to stop giving you food and water through a tube (artificial nutrition or hydration).
A Healthcare Power of Attorney is given to a person you name to make medical decisions for you if you later become unable to make decisions for yourself. This person is called your “healthcare agent.” In a legal document you will name the agent of your choice. You can also express what medical treatments you would not want. Your healthcare agent then knows what choices you would make.
An Advance Instruction for Mental Health Treatment is a legal document that tells physicians and healthcare providers what mental health treatments you would and would not want, if you later become unable to decide yourself. You may also choose someone to make these decisions for you when you are unable to make them yourself.
Our Patient and Family Services staff can offer additional information about advance directives. You can contact Patient and Family Services at extension 4231.
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Beaufort Regional Health System
628 East 12th Street, Washington, NC 27889