Living Will | Advance Directive
What is the Advance Directive?
Oklahoma's Advance Directive for healthcare allows all Oklahomans 18 years of age and older an opportunity to spell out clearly their desires regarding some of life's most difficult issues.
It is the best means of expressing to physicians and others your wishes as to the medical care you wish to receive during the time just prior to your death. By completion of the directive, you can express your wishes to decline or to withdraw life-sustaining treatment, to request or decline or limit other services or procedures and to express the desire to donate specific organs.
The Advance Directive is sometimes referred to as a living will, but it is not the same as your last will and testament. The Advance Directive is to be used only to express healthcare instructions and to appoint a healthcare proxy if you desire.
All these protections are contained in the Oklahoma Rights of the Terminally Ill or Persistently Unconscious Act which was first enacted by the state legislature in 1992 and most recently amended in 1995, to allow for organ donation directives. The purpose of the act is:
To recognize your right to control some aspects of your own medical care and treatment, including but not limited to the right to decline medical treatment or to direct that it be withdrawn, even if death ensues;
To recognize your right to control some aspects of your own medical treatment is protected by the U.S. Constitution and overrides any obligation the physician and other healthcare providers may have to render care or to preserve life and health; and
To recognize that decisions concerning your medical treatment involve highly sensitive, personal issues that do not belong in court, even if you are unable to act on your own behalf, so long as a proxy decision-maker can make the necessary decisions based on your known intentions, personal views or best interests. If evidence of your wishes is sufficient, those wishes should control; if there is not sufficient evidence of your wishes, the proxy’s decisions should be based on reasonable judgment about your values and what your wishes would be based upon those values.
If you have completed an Advance Directive and been diagnosed as terminally ill or persistently unconscious by two physicians as defined in the directive and your attending physician does not want to comply with your wishes, that physician must act promptly to arrange for your care by another physician or healthcare provider.
The law protects you from a misjudgment by a physician by requiring a separate opinion by a second physician who must agree that your condition is terminal or that you are persistently unconscious. The second opinion must be made a part of your medical record.
Completing the Advance Directive is not a difficult process. It requires only that persons voluntarily completely the directive be 18 years or older and of sound mind as evidenced by two witnesses.
Witnesses also must be at least 18 years old and must not be a person who will inherit from you.
It is your decision whether to complete an advanced directive; it can not be completed by family members, an agent under a durable power of attorney or a guardian.
You may be required to sign the form as many as 15 times, depending upon your wishes, to fully complete the document. The document does not have to be notarized.
An Advance Directive, which is any writing executed in accordance with the Oklahoma Rights of the Terminally Ill or Persistently Unconscious Act, may be revoked at any time, in writing or simply by telling your attending physician, other healthcare provider or a witness, regardless of your physical or mental condition. Your request to revoke the directive must be made a part of your medical record by the attending physician or other healthcare provider.
Photocopies of your fully executed and witnessed directive should be made for your personal records, your family members and your proxy and alternate if you have chosen them. The original or a photocopy should be furnished to your physician or other healthcare provider who will make it a part of your medical record.
DHS, as Oklahoma’s State Agency on Aging, is responsible for informing older Oklahomans about laws and policies that affect them. Publication of this information does not indicate support for or against older person using the options provided by the Oklahoma Rights of the Terminally Ill or Persistently Unconscious Act.
Advance Directive Glossary of Terms
Oklahoma Advance Directive, please note that Adobe Acrobat is needed to view this document.
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