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That is possible, but it does not have to be the same person. Your confidant will help you while you are mentally competent, but you will exercise your rights yourself. Your representative will act on your behalf when you are no longer mentally competent and will then exercise your rights as a patient in your place. Appointing your confidant as your representative can have an advantage. That person, who knows you well and whom you trust, can continue to help you. First as a confidant when you can still make decisions yourself. Later, when you can no longer exercise your patient rights yourself, that same person will help you as a representative. This can ensure that your values, preferences for care and life goals are respected as much as possible.

If you are incapacitated, you can no longer exercise your rights as a patient yourself. Then it is up to the representative to act on your behalf. This person does this to the extent and as long as you are unable to exercise your rights yourself. The representative must always take into account your values, preferences for current and future care and life goals. The representative must involve you as much as possible, in proportion to your level of understanding at that time.

As long as you are competent, you exercise your rights as a patient yourself. However, you may need a person to support you during conversations with doctors and other healthcare providers. This is your confidant. This person will support you, but cannot decide anything on your behalf. You do not have to formally appoint a confidant. For example, you can ask a family member or friend to assist you.

In order to be able to make an autonomous decision about treatment, it is important that you are competent. In principle, everyone is competent, until proven otherwise. You are incapacitated if you can no longer understand and weigh the information from the care provider, do not understand the consequences of your decision and/or cannot make a decision. This is the case, for example, with advanced dementia or a coma. There is no objective measuring instrument to determine whether someone is incapacitated or not. It must therefore be determined per decision and per situation. Capacity to make decisions depends on the context and the question being asked. For example, someone can sometimes still decide on a day out, but not on a mortgage or euthanasia. Whether or not you are incapacitated can best be determined by a healthcare provider.