Table 2 Samples of text taken from advance directive forms from Oregon, Delaware, and Utah, showing various readability levels.

Oregon (F-K score, 7.6)

I appoint ____ as my health care representative.

Close to Death. If I am close to death and life support would only postpone that moment of my death:

A. INITIAL ONE:

____I want to receive tube feeding.

____I want tube feeding only as my physician recommends.

____I DO NOT WANT tube feeding.

B. INITIAL ONE:

____I want any other life support that may apply.

____I want life support only as my physician recommends.

____I want NO life support.

Delaware (F-K score, 11.8)

I designate ____ as my agent to make health care decisions for me. If he/she is not living, willing or able, or reasonably available, to make health care decisions for me, then I designate ____ as my agent to make health care decisions for me.

I do not want my life to be prolonged if (please check all that apply) ____(i) I have a terminal condition (an incurable condition from which there is no reasonable medical expectation of recovery and which will cause my death, regardless of the use of life-sustaining treatment). In this case, I give the specific directions indicated:

(Individuals check columns labeled "I want used" or "I do not want used" next to the following: "Artificial nutrition through a conduit," "Hydration through a conduit," "Cardiopulmonary resuscitation," "Mechanical respiration," and "Other [explain]").

Utah (F-K score, 17.8 [POA] and 19 [living will])

I, ____ ... being of sound mind, willfully and voluntarily appoint ___ ... as my agent and attorney-in-fact, without substitution, with lawful authority to execute a directive on my behalf under Section 75-2-1105, governing the care and treatment to be administered to or withheld from me at any time after I incur an injury, disease, or illness which renders me unable to give current directions to attending physicians and other providers of medical services.

I declare that if at any time I should have an injury, disease, or illness, which is certified in writing to be a terminal condition or persistent vegetative state by two physicians who have personally examined me, and in the opinion of those physicians the application of life sustaining procedures would serve only to unnaturally prolong the moment of my death and to unnaturally postpone or prolong the dying process, I direct that these procedures be withheld or withdrawn and my death be permitted to occur naturally.