What is a Directive to Physician?

A Directive to Physician or Family and Surrogates allows you the opportunity to make a treatment decision now should you sometime in the future meet certain medical criteria. Specifically, this occurs in two situations. If in the judgment of your physician you are suffering with a terminal condition from which you are expected to die within six months, even with available life-sustaining treatment provided in accordance with prevailing standards of medical care, you may request that all treatments other than those needed to keep you comfortable be discontinued or withheld and your physician allow you to die as gently as possible; or you may request that you be kept alive in the terminal condition using available life-sustaining treatment. If in the judgment of your physician you are suffering with an irreversible condition so that you cannot care for yourself or make decisions for yourself and are expected to die without life-sustaining treatment provided in accordance with ...  more