Durable Power Of Attorney For Health Care: A Case Study

A durable power of attorney for health care is when a patient designates another individual, a surrogate, to direct the course of their medical treatment upon your incapacity. Patients who are 18 years of age or older, or emancipated minors, have recognized to have capacity until determined otherwise. According to Pope, “This presumption is rebutted only after the attending physician, often with confirmation from a second physician, determines that the patient lacks one or more of the three essential attributes of capacity”. These attributes include the following: first, the patient must have the ability to understand both her own condition and the recommended treatments significant benefits, burdens, risks, and reasonable alternatives. Second,
If a patient does not have an advanced directive or one is not available when needed, a legal issue can result. Legally an advanced directive needs to be on hand when the patient is recognized as incompetent of making his or her own decisions. If an advanced directive is not on file or available when the patient reports incompetent the court may be asked to get involved on decision care making if the patient did not verbalize who the surrogate was prior to becoming incompetent. Without an advanced directive on file a patient may be waiting until the advanced care can be provided which results in a lack of patient autonomy. According to Santonocito, Ristagno, Gullo, Weil, “In the absence of an advanced directive or proxy decision maker, the general preference is to preserve life when possible”. A patient cannot be forced to obtain an advanced directive. Another legal issue plays in when the federal law forces a patient to designate a durable power of attorney for healthcare. According to Vankat and Becker, “It is against federal law to force a patient to designate a health care power of attorney”. A patient has the right to choose whether they want an advance directive or
Ethical issues regarding DPOA can arise from various situations and can be harming to the patient. If the surrogate fails to follow patient preferences or wishes this can result in an ethical issue. Surrogates may base their decisions on factors external to the patient. A surrogate may not look out for the patient’s best interests but rather their own interests. This can be viewed an ethical issue because the surrogate is going against the patient wishes and interests. An ethical issue can also result when their surrogates have an impaired memory. If surrogates are clinically diagnosed with conditions such as stress, depression, and anxiety they may fail to make the appropriate decision based on the patients wishes. In result to this the incompetent patient may be receiving treatments that their wishes contradicted. Ethical issues also result when the surrogates do not know the patient’s preferences. Surrogates choices that are made are often not the same choices the patient would have made for themselves. Surrogates often “cannot distinguish their own preferences from those of the patient” (Pope, 2012). When the surrogate does not know the patient preferences is it noticed that there is a failure of patients to discuss end-of-life planning with their surrogates. “A durable power of attorney for healthcare should have the same authority as the