The UW Law School's Elder Law Clinic organized an opportunity in April for students and faculty at the UW-Madison to complete important health care advance directives, including Living Wills and Health Care Powers of Attorney.
Past and present student participants of the Elder Law Clinic set up tables in the atrium of the Law School to provide one-on-one counseling and assist students and faculty with filling out forms. They distributed packets of information including wallet cards and a list of tips on how to talk to chosen health care agents about difficult issues regarding health care preferences.
The life and death of Terri Schiavo thrust the importance of documenting advance health care directives into the national spotlight. The decision to take Schiavo off of life-supporting machines became a legal tug-of-war between her husband and parents because Schiavo had not documented her preferences before she became incapacitated.
Wisconsin does not have a ?family consent? law. Therefore, if a person in Wisconsin becomes mentally incapacitated, family members and spouses do not have the automatic right to make health care decisions for their loved ones.
Attorney Betsy Abramson, Assistant Clinical Professor and Director of the Elder Law Clinic at UW Law School, says students often have misconceptions that documenting advance health care directives is not something they need to thinking seriously about now. However, Abramson points out, Terri Schiavo was only twenty-six years old when she lapsed into a vegetative state after suffering heart failure.
The initiative received a strong response from the university community. More than 120 individuals filled out power of attorney for health care forms, while 67 living wills were completed.
A living will, technically known as a Declaration to Physicians, is an actual statement from an individual to physicians declaring not to use life-sustaining treatment such as feeding tubes if the individual were ever to lapse into a persistent vegetative state or in a ?terminal condition with death imminent.? Living wills do not address any other situation when a person could be incapacitated and unable to make decisions about health care, such as after a stroke or in advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease.
Designating a power of attorney for health care permits an individual (the ?principal?) to appoint someone else to serve as ?health care agent? and make decisions anytime the principal is incapacitated. The power of attorney for health care is a more comprehensive document and covers more specific situations and medical treatments. Therefore, Abramson says, it is vital that individuals discuss health care preferences with their agents and give them detailed instructions on how to proceed in the case of a medical emergency.
More information and forms can be obtained from the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services Web site http://www.dhfs.state.wi.us/ or at the Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups at www.cwag.org.
Submitted by on April 18, 2005
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