Advance Medical Directives (Living Will, Power of Attorney, and Health Care Proxy) Glossary of Terms

Advance directives: These directives pertain to treatment preferences and the designation of a surrogate decision-maker in the event that a person should become unable to make medical decisions on their own behalf. Advance directives generally fall into three categories: living will, power of attorney and health care proxy.
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Advance medical directives : These directives pertain to treatment preferences and the designation of a surrogate decision-maker in the event that a person should become unable to make medical decisions on their own behalf. Advance directives generally fall into three categories: living will, power of attorney and health care proxy.
See the entire definition of Advance medical directives

Analgesia: The inability to feel pain while still conscious. From the Greek an-, without + algesis, sense of pain.

Cardiopulmonary: Having to do with both the heart and lungs.

Condition: The term "condition" has a number of biomedical meanings including the following:

1. An unhealthy state, such as in "this is a progressive condition."
2. A state of fitness, such as "getting into condition."
3. Something that is essential to the occurrence of something else; essentially a "precondition."
4. As a verb: to cause a change in something so that a response that was previously associated with a certain stimulus becomes associated with another stimulus; to condition a person, as in behavioral conditioning.

CPR: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Also cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation and computer-based patient records.

Daughter: 1. A female offspring. 2. A female adopted child. 3. A product of radioactive decay. 4. A cell resulting from cell division.

Disease: Illness or sickness often characterized by typical patient problems (symptoms) and physical findings (signs). Disruption sequence: The events that occur when a fetus that is developing normally is subjected to a destructive agent such as the rubella (German measles) virus.

Durable power of attorney: This is a type of advance medical directive in which legal documents provide the power of attorney to another person in the case of an incapacitating medical condition.
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Event: A set of outcomes. Cardiovascular events might include a heart attack and gastrointestinal events a GI bleed. The use of the term "event" in medicine comes from probability theory.

Family: 1. A group of individuals related by blood or marriage or by a feeling of closeness. 2. A biological classification of related plants or animals that is a division below the order and above the genus. 3. A group of genes related in structure and in function that descended from an ancestral gene. 4. A group of gene products similarly related in structure and function and of shared genetic descent. 5. Parents and their children. The most fundamental social group in humans.

Gastrostomy: A surgical opening into the stomach. This opening may be used for feeding usually via a feeding tube called a gastrostomy tube. This can also be done by percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG). PEG is a surgical procedure for placing a feeding tube but does not necessitate doing an open laparotomy (operation on the abdomen). The aim of PEG (as with any gastrostomy) is to feed those who cannot swallow. PEG may be done by a. surgeon, otolaryngologist (ENT specialist) or gastroenterologist (GI specialist). It is done in a. hospital or outpatient surgical facility. Local anesthesia (usually lidocaine or another spray) is used to anesthetize the throat. An endoscope (a flexible, lighted instrument) is passed through the mouth, throat and esophagus to the stomach. The surgeon then makes a small incision (cut) in the skin of the abdomen and pushes an intravenous cannula (an IV tube) through the skin into the stomach and sutures (ties) it in place. The patient can usually go home the same day or the next morning. Possible complications include wound infection (as in any kind of surgery) and dislodging or malfunction of the tube. Percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy may be a mouthful (as a term) but it describes the procedure accurately. A gastrostomy (a surgical opening into the stomach) is made percutaneously (through the skin) using an endoscope to put the feeding tube in place. PEG, when feasible, takes less time, carries less risk and costs less than a classic surgical gastrostomy which requires opening the abdomen.

Health: As officially defined by the World Health Organization, a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

Health care proxy: A health care proxy is one form of advance medical directive. Advance medical directives pertain to treatment preferences and the designation of a surrogate decision-maker in the event that a person should become unable to make medical decisions on their own behalf.
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Hospital: It may seem unnecessary to define a "hospital" since everyone knows the nature of a hospital. A hospital began as a charitable institution for the needy, aged, infirm, or young.
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Incurable: Not amenable to a cure. Incapable of being cured, healed and made well again. Many pancreatic cancers are incurable. From the word cure, from the Latin cura meaning care, concern or attention.

Life-support: Pertaining to life support, as in "He is only here because of the life-support systems.

Living will: A living will is one form of advance medical directive. Advance medical directives pertain to treatment preferences and the designation of a surrogate decision-maker in the event that a person should become unable to make medical decisions on their own behalf.
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Mechanical ventilation: Use of a machine called a ventilator or respirator to improve the exchange of air between the lungs and the atmosphere.
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Medicaid: State programs of public assistance to persons regardless of age whose income and resources are insufficient to pay for health care. The United States federal government provides matching funds to the state Medicaid programs.

Medicare: The United States government's health insurance program for:

• "senior citizens" -- people 65 years of age or older,
• certain younger people with specific disabilities, and
• people with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) -- permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a transplant.

Nursing: 1) Profession concerned with the provision of services essential to the maintenance and restoration of health by attending the needs of sick persons. 2) Feeding a infant at the breast.

Nursing home: A residential facility for persons with chronic illness or disability, particularly older people who have mobility and eating problems. Also called a convalescent home, long-term care facility.

Pain: An unpleasant sensation that can range from mild, localized discomfort to agony. Pain has both physical and emotional components. The physical part of pain results from nerve stimulation. Pain may be contained to a discrete area, as in an injury, or it can be more diffuse, as in disorders like fibromyalgia . Pain is mediated by specific nerve fibers that carry the pain impulses to the brain where their conscious appreciation may be modified by many factors.
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Percutaneous: Through the skin, as in a percutaneous biopsy.

Rehabilitation: The process of restoration of skills by a person who has had an illness or injury so as to regain maximum self-sufficiency and function in a normal or as near normal manner as possible. For example, rehabilitation after a stroke may help the patient walk again and speak clearly again.
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Resuscitation: The procedure of restoring to life, as in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Sign: Any objective evidence of disease. Gross blood in the stool is a sign of disease. It can be recognized by the patient, doctor, nurse, or others. In contrast, a symptom is, by its nature, subjective. Abdominal pain is a symptom. It is something only the patient can know.
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Utility: In the analysis of health outcomes, utility is a number between 0 and 1 that is assigned to a state of health or an outcome. Perfect health has a value of 1. Death has a value of 0.

Ventilation: The exchange of air between the lungs and the atmosphere so that oxygen can be exchanged for carbon dioxide in the alveoli (the tiny air sacs in the lungs).
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