Approximating Informed Consent and Fostering Communication: The Anatomy of an Advance Directive

...This article discusses the approach to advance directive documents by the New Jersey Commission on Legal and Ethical Problems in the of Health Care (informally known as the New Jersey Bioethics) and its Task Force on Public and Professional Education (the"Education Task Force"). The product of this project, discussed further, is a twenty-four-page brochure containing educational and informational and three types of advance directive forms -- a proxy directive, an directive, and a combined advance directive. The analysis here in particular on the "combined advance directive," a single document appointment of a health-care representative (a proxy) with an directive ("living will"). The combined advance directive, at the end of this article, represents the preferred (though not the) approach recommended by the Bioethics Commission, and its use is in New Jersey's advance directives law....