You can legally prepare for future decisions about your health care in more than one way. For example, you can discuss your wishes with your physician and have her or him document your discussions in your medical record. This is a perfectly legal way for you to authorize your physician to forego life-sustaining medical treatment under the circumstances that you and your physician agree to. In Arizona, advance directives include the Living Will and the Health Care Power of Attorney. The law in all states and the District of Columbia authorizes at least one of these documents.
Many states authorize both.
The Prehospital Medical Care Directive is another directive authorized in Arizona and in a growing number of other states. The living will In a written living will you provide instructions for any person legally authorized to make health care decisions for you at any time you are unable to make your own decisions. These two documents have almost nothing in common. There is no medical standard for clearly distinguishing patients who are terminally ill. Prognosis of time of death even for people with incurable, life-threatening conditions is notoriously unreliable.