With regard to the formal requirements of such advance health care directives, in relation to the case of a woman hospitalised in a cardiac surgery intensive care unit in a medically induced coma, who had previously designated her support administrator while at the same time expressing directives rejecting specific forms of health care, the Court of Modena21 observed that, although it is true that the form of these directives was not equivalent, in the case in point, to a public act or to an authenticated private deed as required by the legislation, it is also true that the documents during the preliminary investigation stage made it possible to verify that these directives, as shown in the form countersigned by witnesses, constitute an expression of the specific wish of a person in full possession of her faculties, with the consequence of a due protection of this wish and, specifically, of that selfawareness of personal dignity as formed by the person during her life through her rational inquiries, her emotional experiences and the established outcomes of the development of her philosophical and religious views.