Living wills help families prepare for emergencies, death of loved ones

HARLINGEN - Dealing with medical emergencies and the death of a loved one is not easy, but Craig Klugman of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio is making it easier for people to make important health care decisions now.

Klugman, assistant director at the UTHSC Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, created the Web site www.TexasLivingWill.org that provides advance directive forms - often known as a living will - and step-by-step instructions to fill them out. The Web site is bilingual.

"As a clinical ethicist, I have encountered many families with relatives who are in the hospital in persistent vegetative states or at the end of their lives and the families have no idea what decisions to make," Klugman said in a new release.

"Our goal is to help people give a gift that enables families to know what loved ones would have wanted and to take away any guilt about making a wrong decision."

Dr. James Castillo, faculty member at the Regional Health Academic Center and medical director for Odyssey Hospice and hospitalist director at Valley Baptist Medical Center, said Tuesday that the right time for people to think of these decisions is when they are in good health.

Castillo said he has often seen Rio Grande Valley families who have not discussed these issues.

"It‘s always the right time to do (this paperwork), the only wrong time to do it is when it‘s too late," Castillo said. "Those kinds of documents empower the patient and relieve their loved ones of that burden."

Advance directive documents also help physicians, Castillo said, because it lets them know what the patient would want.

Castillo said it is important to clarify that these documents are only used when patients can‘t speak for themselves.

People will be able to fill out the following forms in either Spanish or English as well as print them in either language:

- The Directive to Physicians and Family or Surrogates Form, which states a person‘s wishes regarding medical treatment;

- The Medical Power of Attorney Form, which allows people to give someone else the authority to make health care decisions for them when they are unable to;

- The Out of Hospital Do Not Resuscitate Form, which allows people with terminal or irreversible conditions to refuse resuscitation measures when they are out of the hospital;

- The Declaration for Mental Health Treatment form, which documents decisions about mental health in case a court decides a person is unable to make these decisions.