Assignment Help | The Advance Health Care Directive

Week 5 Field Activity Paper

This paper will have three parts addressing two important pieces of legislation related to the right of individuals to make health care decisions for themselves.

Part I
The Advance Health Care Directive
Locate a copy of an advanced directive (AD) that complies with the laws of the state in which you work. The organization in which you work should have a copy of an advance directive that is given to patients. If not, download your state’s Advance Directives here http://www.caringinfo.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3289.
Complete the advance directive for yourself. Do not turn in your AD with your paper. The AD is for your personal use.
In your paper, Part I:
Identify where you obtained the AD and explain its compliance with state law.
Conduct research (1-2 sources) to learn more about the AD in your state and explain how it works.
Discuss how easy or difficult it was to complete the AD. Your comments should be specific and both objective and subjective. For example, when you state your personal feelings, you must relate them to the literature (textbook and research) that discusses this process and the difficulties that many people face when completing an advance directive.
(Cite/ reference any sources you use to explore these questions, including your texts.)
Part II
Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) Form
What is a Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form?
When should this form be completed?
Who can complete the form?
Who needs to sign the form to make it a legal document?
(Cite/reference any sources you use to explore these questions, including your texts.)
Part III
Tie the two first sections together by writing a summary and conclusion.
This section should address:

1. the differences between an Advance Health Care Directive and the POLST,
2. the RN’s important role in assuring the patient’s right to autonomy in choosing the healthcare interventions the patient does or does not want.

MODEL ANSWER

Part I: Advance Directive

An Advance Directive (AD) refers to a legal document that a person fills to show his/her wishes when their lives come to an end (Butler et al. 2015). An Advance Directive does not expire until the owner change it, and they exist in two main types; the living will and the durable power of the attorney. I got my advance directive form from the website of my State of residence; that is California. The downloaded AD form provides all the spaces that need to be filled and also provides guidelines that can be erased once the whole process of filling is completed. Different states may …

Advance Directives are not just papers that people create to satisfy their wishes, but they also comply with various rules of the states within which a person lives. Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) is a law that was passed by the California State Congress in 1990 and allowed all adult patients to state their wishes about their likes and dislikes of specific medical processes. The therapeutic procedures, including without limitation to surgeries and certain medical treatments. Similarly, the Advance Directive has a section that allows people to state their wishes regarding certain medical procedures. Regarding both the State Laws and the Advance Directives, people …

Advance directives work based on respect to a person’s decisions. For example, if the owner of the instruction provides that he/she doesn’t want a particular medication, or to be put under life-sustaining facilities, then the doctors must go by that decision without fail. Similarly, the advance directive provides a person who becomes the decision-maker of the directive owner under a power of …

Completing an advance directive isn’t easy. It requires individual decisions that a person has to understand first, before making. I filled the instruction in the presence of family members, and my first problem was the divergence of opinions. I had my wishes, like not wanting to be put on life-sustaining facilities such as the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), but my parents would not accept it. The result was an argument that lasted long. Butler et al. (2015) highlight that opinion …

The second problem I faced is the lack of trust on whether whatever I write will be considered. A directive is just a form that I downloaded from a website; hence, knowing its authenticity was a problem, and as Sharp and Thompson (2016) provide, some education should be carried out when the form …

Part II: Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) Form Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) refers to a method used in the United States to boost the end-of-life care. The PLOST form is an agreement on a paper that allows physicians and care providers to speak with patients to come up with individual care plans and medical orders which must be respected and followed by the healthcare workers in the presence of a medical crisis. The signatory of the PLOST form may vary from one State to another, although it is between the patient and a medical professional. In my State, the PLOST form is signed by a medical professional (Schmidt, Zive, Fromme, Cook & Tolle, 2014). The signing of a PLOST form occurs after…