Is an individual treatment plan necessary to make a living will effective?
A treatment plan would not necessarily be essential to the effectiveness of a living will, however it would make for much more useful and clinically appropriate decision making. Often medication levels need to be titrated to achieve the right dosage, agreement to a one off dosage level may hamper rather than free up the system. Similarly it is important for everyone involved to understand that the living will might be able to deal with more that the medical issues, and as such a more comprehensive plan would seem more beneficial. • Consultations suggest that individual treatment plans are not being developed. Given this evidence what would have to happen to ensure that treatment plans were developed? Treatment plans seem currently to be an option for treating practitioners. It is unlikely that mandatorily requiring them would necessarily produce plans which would be useful or beneficial to the person. They are however a way of placing the holistic needs of a person on paper and for the