The health care naming process: declaring health care decisions through an advance health care directive

Instructions For Health Care Naming The Person Who Will Make Health Care Decisions For You

I call this procedure of defining health care directives in advance the health care naming process. As a health care chaplain, my assignment is often to help people understand they need to make their health care desires known through an advance health care directive.

An Advance Health Care Directive(AHCD) is a written document. This written power of attorney is a legal document.

Its purpose is simply to make known your wishes for health care by naming someone to make health care decisions for you. These wishes or desires may be oral or written.

When I was a hospital chaplain intern, preparing for professional chaplain certification, my job was often to provide patients information on how to prepare for their health care naming exactly who would make those health care decisions when the patient no longer could.

Understanding This Health Care Naming Process

This health care naming process is a requirement that health care entities must meet. Even now in my chaplain career, I am often asked to help people understand that this advance directive requirement is a good idea. Whether they do so is up to them as an individual.

I tell them that the AHCD communicates one's wishes about the medical care and treatment they want, and who they want to speak for them if they reach a point where they can no longer make their own health care decisions.

Who Requires This Health Care Naming Procedure?

All hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, hospices, and health maintenance organizations that receive Medicare and Medi-Cal payments must provide patients with written information about making an AHCD.

The law does not require that you must have or make an AHCD, whereby you make this health care naming decision known. The law compels the health care organization to tell people how to do it.

I suppose that's why, as a health care chaplain, I am often asked to deliver this message. I guess the thinking is that no one wants to turn the chaplain down just before surgery or when making End Of Life decisions.

When Does The Advance Directive For Health Care Begin?

In my specific state of residence, under California law, adult persons who can make their own decisions have the right to accept or refuse medical treatment or life sustaining procedures.

Some examples of medical procedures that you have the right to refuse might be artificial nutrition (feeding through a tube) and hydration (usually intravenous fluids). Note that these medical procedures are often to keep a persons body functioning when the quality of life is so poor that we often say that only a matter of time.

This is NOT what is often called assisted suicide. The advance directive decision for health care is exactly what the name implies, a decision made in advance whereby one is naming health care directives to be fulfilled.

The advance directive for health care begins when someone comes to the place when all has been done medically, the patient is imminent, and they no longer have their own voice to declare their health care desires. It is then that an advance directive declares their wishes.

The Benefits Of The Health Care Naming Process

In my career as a chaplain I have discovered that a common task is helping people understand that they need to make health care decisions through an advance health care directive.

This assignment is much easier once they understand the benefits of declaring their medical wishes in advance.