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CONDITIONS
UNDER WHICH YOU MAY EXECUTE A LIVING WILL
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Any competent person may
execute a document known as a "living will." If you are suffering an
incurable injury, disease, illness or condition
certified to be terminal by two (2) medical doctors who have examined you,
and where the application of life-sustaining procedures of any kind would
serve only to
 prolong
artificially your life, and where a medical doctor determines that your
death is imminent, whether or not life-sustaining procedures are utilized,
or you have been diagnosed as being in a
persistent vegetative state, you may direct that such
procedures which would only prolong the dying process be withheld or
withdrawn, and that you be permitted to die naturally with only the
administration of medication, sustenance, or the performance of any
medical procedure deemed necessary by your attending physician to provide
you with comfort care.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS LIVING WILL |
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Designation
of Agent
You may designate a proxy to make
health care decisions for you when you are no longer capable of making
them yourself. Your agent may consent, refuse to consent, or
withdraw consent to medical treatment and may make decisions about
withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment.
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Election of Treatment(s)
After you have completed this directive and
printed it out, you will be allowed to check off treatments you want and
don't want. You will be given the option of receiving
artificial nutrition and hydration and other treatment.
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Pregnancy
Notwithstanding other
directions, if you are pregnant, you can elect that life-sustaining
treatment not be withdrawn if it is possible that the embryo/fetus will
develop to the point of live birth with the continued application of
life-sustaining treatment.
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Operative Date
Your living will becomes operative when a copy is provided to
your attending physician; and you are determined by
your attending physician to be incompetent and in a terminal condition or
in a state of permanent unconsciousness.
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Ancillary
Effect of Living Will
The making of a living will shall not
restrict, inhibit or impair in any manner the sale, procurement, or
issuance of any policy of life insurance, nor shall it be deemed to modify
the terms of existing policy of life insurance. No policy of life
insurance shall be legally impaired or invalidated in any manner by the
withholding or withdrawal of artificial life-sustaining procedures from an
insured patient, notwithstanding any term of the policy to the contrary.
No physician, health facility or other health provider and no health care
service plan, insurer issuing disability insurance, self-insured employee,
welfare benefit plan, or nonprofit hospital service plan, shall require
any person to execute a directive as a condition for being insured for, or
receiving, health care services.
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Revocation
Your living will may be
revoked at any time and in any manner by you without regard to your mental
or physical condition. A revocation is effective upon communication
to your attending physician or other health care provider by you or a
witness to the revocation. Your attending physician or other health
care provider shall
make your revocation a part of your medical records.
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 Executing and Delivering Your Living Will
After you have signed your
directive, you should gather two witnesses, over the age of 18 years, for
signing. The original or a copy should be
submitted to your physician for entry in your medical records. If you
revoke your living will, the original should be submitted to your
physician to be placed in your medical records as well.
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SOURCE: Idaho Statutes §39-4504; Living Will and §39-4509
General Provisions.
This
form adopts the statutory language of Title 39, Chapter 45, Section
4, Idaho Statutes (Natural Death Act). Contained therein is a
recital that a Durable Power of Attorney for health care decisions
has been duly executed on the same date as this living will.
Title 39, Chapter 45, Section 5 states "In order to implement the
general desires of a person as expressed in the "living will," a
competent person may appoint any adult person to exercise a durable
power of attorney for health care." It would thus appear that
a person must execute BOTH a living will and
durable power of attorney in
order to implement his or her general directions regarding the
withholding or withdrawing of artificial life-sustaining procedures.
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