Question

According to Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 671, when is a person dead?

Name the 3 things are considered Advanced Directives in the Texas Health and Safety Code?

Answer 1

Sec 671.001. Standard used in determining death.

A person is dead when according to ordinary standard of medical practice .there us irreversible cessation of the person's spontaneous respiratory and circulatory functions.

In artificial means of support preclude a determination that a person's spontaneous respiratory and circulatory functions have ceased the person's is dead when in the announced option of a physician,according to ordinary standard of medical practice.there is irreversible cessation of all spontaneous brain function.death occures when the relevant functions cease.

Death must be pronounced before artificial means of supporting a person's respiratory and circulatory functions are terminated.

A registered nurse including an advanced practice registered nurse or physician assistant may determine and pronounce a person dead is situations other than those described by subsection

If permitted by written policies of a licensed health Care facility,institution,or entity providing services to that person.those policies must include physicians assistants who are credentialed or otherwise permitted to practice at the facility institution .or entity.if the facility institution or entity has an organized nursing staff and an organized medical staff or medical consultant the nursing staff and medical staff or consultant shall jointly develop and approve those policies.the executive commissioner of the health and human services commission shall adopt rules to govern policies for facilities institutions or entities that do not have organized nursing staffs and organised medical staffs or medical consultants.

In a discussion that spans several pages that court of appeals describes how it has reason to know that the process by which a patient us removed from life support always implicates the police power of the state op .101. The court describes a negligent homicide criminal case against a physician which relied in part on a statutory definition of death contained in 671.001 of the health and safety code op.101-03.

That chapter contains a general procedure for declaring that a patient has died which sets in motion certain steps routinely taken after a patient has died.with regard to life support that chapter provides.death must be pronounce before artificial means supporting a person's respiratory and circulatory functions are terminated.TeX Health and Safety codes 671.001 .thats indeed the general starting point against which the more specific provisions of TADA were enacted.

But the court of appeals would read this general provision to call in to question one of the most fundamental parts of the Texas advance directive and the natural death act that proceed it) the statutory authorization for physicians to carry out a patient's advance directive by withdrawing life sustaining medical intervention from a qualified patient.

According to the court of appeals it has spotted a potential area of statutory conflict with this aspect of TADA.op.103 n.35. On the one hand section 671. 001 expressly prohibites the withdrawal of life support absent a pronouncement of neurological death by the attending physician.op.103.n35. On other hand the Texas advance directive act authorizes an attending physician to withdraw life sustaining treatment including mechanical ventilation before the natural death has occurred.I'd.

There is no small question.providing a legal framework of certainly in which physicians can carry out a patient's advance directive before a. natural death had occurred is almost the definition of an advance directive.for the court of appeals to inject doubt into whether TADA achieves this essential goal and actually does protect physicians and other medical provider who follow patient advance directive I'll serves both physicians and the patient and families who want their advance directives to be followed.

Having injected this undue doubt into one of the most fundamental parts of TADA the court of appeals stops there describing its own question as a question of reconciliation that we need not address other than to observe that the potential conflict clearly implicates the exercise of the states police power..op.104 n.35.But this was not an open question in texas law before this opinion.the protections of the Texas advance directives act are specific and explicit.the court of appeals should not have called in to question whether advance directives can be followed in Texas.