Nutrition and fluids
Your preferences around the use of intravenous fluids and parenteral nutrition.
Living Wills & Advance Directives
A considered record of your healthcare wishes.
An Advance Directive can help you record what you would like to happen if you lose the capacity to make informed decisions about your medical care.
Understanding an Advance Directive
Reassurance when future healthcare decisions feel uncertain.
An Advance Directive, sometimes known as a Living Will, is a statement of your wishes for future medical care if you lose the capacity to take informed decisions. It can give reassurance to those concerned about losing control of future healthcare decisions.
A guide for difficult decisions
Helping your wishes be understood.
When healthcare professionals face difficult decisions about end-of-life treatment or care, an Advance Directive can provide an important guide and help ensure that your wishes are taken into account.
It can also encourage timely discussions with doctors, nurses, family and close friends, helping to relieve some of the burden of decision-making at what may be a distressing time. Because it concerns serious healthcare matters, we strongly recommend discussing an Advance Directive with your GP and family before putting one in place.
What you may wish to consider
Specific choices for your future care.
Resuscitation
Your wishes about cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Life-saving treatment
Treatment decisions in particular illnesses or circumstances where capacity or consent may be impaired, such as after a stroke, head injury or dementia.
Particular procedures
Specific procedures, such as blood transfusion, where these are important to your beliefs or wishes.
Important limits
What an Advance Directive cannot do.
- Refuse treatment when you have capacity to give or refuse consent.
- Refuse basic nursing care for comfort, including washing, bathing and mouth care.
- Refuse food or drink offered by mouth, or measures solely intended to maintain comfort, such as pain relief.
- Demand treatment that a healthcare team considers inappropriate.
- Refuse treatment for a mental disorder where the Mental Health Act 1983 applies.
- Request anything unlawful, including euthanasia or assisted suicide.
Keeping your wishes current
When an Advance Directive may no longer apply.
- You have subsequently made a Health & Welfare Lasting Power of Attorney and given your attorney authority to accept or refuse treatment covered by the directive.
- You revoke it yourself while you have the required mental capacity.
- It was made when you did not have the required mental capacity.
- You were unduly influenced by others when making it.
Contact us
Start the conversation with confidence.
We can help you consider how an Advance Directive may fit within your wider personal estate planning arrangements.