Legal Issues Impacting Patient Care - Video Lesson

Hello, and welcome to today's lesson on understanding the critical legal issues directly affecting patient care. Understanding this topic is important both for the welfare of your patients as well as for your own legal protection. First, let's discuss advanced directives. Advanced directives are legally binding documents that outline an individual's wishes regarding medical treatment in situations where they are unable to communicate these wishes themselves. Understanding and respecting advance directives safeguards the autonomy of the patient and ensures that health care providers act in line with their expressed preferences. Some examples of advance directives are a living will, which states the type of medical treatment one wishes to receive or not receive, such as life support interventions. Another example of an advance directive is do not hospitalize order, which specifies conditions under which a person should not be sent to the hospital. A specific kind of advance directive is the do