American Staff

Law students from the University of Oklahoma will host a legal Clinic at the Moore Brand Senior Center, 501 E. Main St., on Saturday, April 5.

The event is from 10 a.m. to noon. and is designed to assist those seniors interested in completing an Advance Directive for Health Care.

Law school officials said forms for the directive will be available at no cost, courtesy of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

The clinic is part of the school's Spring 2008 Law Student Community Service Project.

The clinic is funded with a grant from the American Bar Association's Commission on Law and Aging and can help assist senior citizens in making informed decisions regarding their health care.

Oklahoma's Advance Directive for Health Care allows individuals 18 years of age or older to inform physicians and others of their wishes to provide, decline, or withdraw life-sustaining medical care and to donate specified organs when those individuals have been diagnosed to be in a terminal condition, a persistently unconscious state, or an end-stage condition.

The Advance Directive also allows Oklahomans to appoint a Health Care Proxy to make certain decisions should the individual be unable to do so.

People who signed a Directive to Physicians or other Advance Directive for Health Care under Oklahoma law prior to 2006, are urged to complete the new Advance Directive because of additional options under the current law.