18: Choosing Who Will Defend Your Wishes

Selecting the right Health Care Agent is a critical factor in ensuring that we get the kind of care we want when we're critically injured or nearing the end of our lives. Your agent will be responsible for implementing your Advance Healthcare Directive, and (even more) for understanding why you made the decisions you made so they can respond to unanticipated situations. How do you choose the right person? What, exactly, would you be asking them to do?

Referenced:  Review of studies on racial bias in pain perception in NCBI: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17187552/