Principles and challenges of law n° 2016-87 of 2 February 2016 creating new rights for the sick and the end-of-life

Principles and challenges of law n° 2016-87 of 2 february 2016 creating new rights for the sick and the end-of-life. This law reinforces and modifies the rights of patient. Advance directives become binding but are not unenforceable. There are two types of directives depending on whether the person is or is not suffering from a serious illness at the time of writing. Medical doctor has to respect them except three situations: a vital emergency, an unappropriated character or a redaction which is not conform to the patient's medical situation. Advance directives have no limited duration. They can be written in concordance with a model elaborated by the French high health authority. They should be included in the shared medical record. Medical doctors are encouraged to help the patient in the writing of his advance directives. The law introduces the right to a deep and continuous sedation maintained until the death in 3 specific situations: at the patient's request when his vital prognostic is engaged in a brief term, and when he presents a suffering refractory to treatments; at the patient's request when he chooses to withdraw a treatment which maintain him artificially in life, this withdrawing would lead to his vital prognostic in a short time and susceptible to involve an unbearable suffering; when the patient is unable to express his wishes and when the practitioner, after a collegiate procedure, withdraws a treatment which maintains the patient in life, resulting refusal an unreasonable obstinacy.