The advanced health care directives (DAV) are in force in Portugal through Law 25/2012, of 16th July, the “Living Will” and the “Power of attorney for health care providers”.

The living will, is a document through which a person, of legal age and mentally capable, expresses in advance his conscious, free and clarified wishes, in what concerns his health care, once he is unable to express his will personally and autonomously.

This document allows the grantor to express his will, among others, regarding the following situations:

a) To not be submitted to cardiopulmonary resuscitation;

b) To not be submitted to invasive methods of artificial life support;

c) To not be submitted to measures of artificial feeding or hydration that will only delay the natural process of death;

d) To participate in experimental case studies, clinical investigations or clinical trials;

e) To not be submitted to experimental treatments;

f) To refuse the participation in clinical investigations or clinical trials programs;

g) To stop experimental treatments or participate in clinical investigations or clinical trials, for which he has consented;

h) To not authorize blood or other derivatives administration;

i) To receive palliatives measures, minimum oral or subcutaneous hydration;

j) To be administrated with necessary pharmaceutics to control, with effectiveness, pain and other symptoms that can cause suffering or anguish;

k) To receive religious assistance, regarding his religion, when he decides to stop artificial life support;

l) To have nearby at the necessary time the person that he designated to be around when he decides to stop the life artificial support;

m) Any other personal considerations or motivations of his decisions;

Regarding the attorney for health care, it can be any person to whom the grantor can give representative powers to decide about the health care that he can or cannot receive when incapable to express his will personally and autonomously.

Therefore, only persons of legal age and sound mind can be nominated as attorney for health care.

The intervenient officers from the National Registry for Living Will (RENTEV) or from the Notary Office and, also, the owners and managers from the entities that manage health care centers cannot be, at any circumstances, nominated attorney for health cares, except if there exists a familiar relation between them and the grantor.

The DAV shall be valid and effective:

a) For a 5 (five) year period counting from the signature or, if deliver to the RENTEV, since the date of the confirmation of receipt. This term:

i) Is automatically renewed whenever the document is modified;

ii) Is successively renewed by declaration of confirmation, that is, at least, the submission of a new document of DAV;

iii) Maintains its effectiveness when the incapacity of the Grantor occurs during the term.

b) Since the moment the medical team receives the document, by the grantor or his attorney.

c) Even if not registered in the RENTEV, as this registry only has a declarative effect.

The grantor can verbally, at any moment, modify or revoke his document or choose that its effects will only be valid when he becomes invalid to express his will and, cumulatively, with other causes sucha as:

a) The diagnosis of an incurable disease;

b) When there are no more expectations of recovery;

c) When unconscious for an irreversible neurological or psychiatric disease, complicated by a respiratory, renal or cardiac complication.

The Ministry of Health provides in its web page an electronic form of DAV and the access to the RENTEV, depending on whether you are a patient, a doctor from the national system or not or an officer from the RENTEV.