The statute requires every facility to have and to communicate a policy about implementing advance directives. If advance directives are violated, these required policies may be useful to litigants to show that the hospital should have made caregivers aware of advanced directives . A 1998 study found that the number of nursing home patients who had executed advance directives had increased significantly since passage of PSDA, but that the materials provided under the act had far less impact than individual experience with the d eath of a family member or friend. The failure of a medical practitioner to respect a patient's advance directive is medical battery. As such, it is justification for a claim of monetary damages.
Battery involves an unauthorized touching of another person.
In the medical context, battery occurs when a patient is treated without his or her informed consent. It is based on the right of people of sound mind to determine what should or should not be done to their own bodies. Accordingly, a person who has been treated by a medical professional without his or her informed consent may have suffered a medical battery, whether the treatment involved a life-saving procedure or a seemingly trivial but harmful or offensive contact. This is a general rule. How it applies in a specific set of facts can only be learned by consulting directly with an attorney licensed in your state.