Form that allows babysitter to approve medical care while parents travel?

[Anonymous]

We are traveling abroad and leaving our child with the grandparents for several days. I thought I'd read here somewhere that parents should fill out/notarize a form allowing the "babysitter" (grandparents in our case) to make medical decisions in the parents' absence. I can't seem to find anything, though, via the DCUM search function or even through google... Anyone have any links or resources I could use? (Any other suggestions of things we should do, besides the health care proxy form, are also welcome!)

Thank you!

[Anonymous]

We had something once when we used a nanny agency and it was really just a few sentences saying that we authorized care in our absence that we had notarized. It was nothing fancy.

You could type something up yourself and sign it and have it notarized. Make sure both parents sign. In reality, if your child needs emergency care, no doctor is going to ask for a form before performing such care. If there is any form at all, the ER will consider that great. Give them one of your health insurance cards, or xerox front and back of the card for them and keep it with the signed form.

And, more importantly, if the grandparents are from out of town, make sure they know how to get to the doctor or ER. THat's the step people usually forget!

Enjoy your trip!

[Anonymous]

We routinely wrote letters when we traveled and left the kids but did not get them notarized. We just wrote a few lines specifying who had permission and during what time period. We never had to test it though so not sure if the non notarized version would have worked. I assume it would.