Advance Directives and Bedside Registration

This course describes the types of advance directives and explains the role of the registrar in identifying the existence of advance directives and processing such directives when they exist. It describes the specific challenges involved in registering patients at the bedside and discusses express or mini registrations, as well as “Jane/John Doe” registrations. This course explains how patient access staff should interact with emergency patients to avoiding violating the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA).

Estimated course completion time: 1.5 hours.

Learning Objectives:

After this program you should be able to:

• Identify the purpose of advance directives.
• List the general types of advance directives and explain what each covers.
• Identify how to explain advance directives to the patient.
• Differentiate between bedside registration and traditional registration in terms of similarities and differences.
• List the basic steps involved in bedside registration.
• Recognize the unique aspects of emergency department registration.
• Recognize how and why express or mini registrations are done.
• Identify when a Jane/John Doe registration is warranted.
• Define EMTALA.
• Recognize when some registration information may be obtained from the patient without risk of violating EMTALA.

General Program Information