In most cases, your healthcare agent can be anyone that the law in your country or state considers to be an adult, but with these exceptions:
- Your healthcare agent can't be your treating doctor or the doctor's staff (to prevent potential conflicts of interest, some countries and states say no medical treatment providers can be healthcare agents).
- Your healthcare agent can't be the owner/operator or employees of the medical facility, nursing home, or hospice where you're being treated unless you're related by blood, marriage, or adoption.
Before you choose your healthcare agent, it's important to think about a couple of things:
- Can this person be at the hospital to assess the situation firsthand and talk with your doctors?
- Can this person handle the pressure of potentially very hard decisions during a time of great stress?
You should speak with anyone you're considering to be your healthcare agent to make sure that the person is comfortable with the responsibility. You also need to talk about your goals, preferences and priorities in cases of emergency or critical care, advanced illness, or end-of-life situations, and your thoughts about quality of life, so that the person you choose to be your healthcare agent will know how you'd like medical treatment decisions made on your behalf.
Once you're clear about who you would like to choose, MyDirectives makes it easy - just enter the name and contact information in the appropriate boxes. Or if you have previously entered this person in your list of personal contacts in your My Circle section, simply click on the person's name in the contact box that pops up.