Why Is Advance Directives Important

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Pages: 7

Importance of Advance Directives in Medical-Aid in Dying
Sonachi Uzoegwu, Ofogh Khodadadi & Emad Salahi

NUR 403
Anne Moorhouse
June 15th, 2018

Assisted dying (i.e euthanasia), by the passing of Bill C-14, is legal in Canada. However, the law is entirely lacking as it does not go far enough; it is strictly limited to individuals whose deaths are “reasonably foreseeable”. As a result, advance directives for medical assistance in dying (MAID) are prohibited, even for those with debilitating chronic and/or neurodegenerative conditions. Advance directives are legal documents that allow patients to state their wishes concerning end-of-life
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Advance directives in MAID should be followed is because it respects the autonomy of the patient. It is “a person’s oral and written instructions about his or her future medical care, in the event he or she becomes unable to communicate.” (O’Sullivan et al., 2015). A patient should able to state their wishes for the future when they are competent just in case they aren’t able to make such decisions later. Opponents of advanced directives in maid often put across contradicting arguments. One of the arguments regarding advance directives is that the patient can no longer express their wishes or make decisions for themselves but that is the very reason why advanced directive should be followed because they were given when the patient was last fully competent. Further, in instances when individuals are involved in incidents that cause severe head injury, for example a car accident, and can no longer make decisions themselves a next of kin can request that any measure to further prolong their living be stopped. This can be done without the client giving any prior