Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment

Yes.

Well, and, and the other thing is like the POLST.

Look, in Pennsylvania it's called the POLST.

They're called the, you know, MOLST.

But it specifically asks you these questions, and they, they are gut checks, but it's better to have this information than go through the rest of your life with the trauma thinking you did the wrong thing.

So some of these documents are legal, and some of them are, uh, medical.

So you got your lawyer, and then you've got your doctor.

And the POLST and the MOLST is more, you know, the detail, DNI, DNR, DNH, like all that stuff, but it's more end of life.

It comes down to it.

And, and also, also the other thing, uh, that's con- that's similar to that, the, the advance directive, is that, that POLST form, that do not resuscitate form, a pink, a hot pink form.

Right.

That one, that pretty much just says, "Don't bring me back," or, "Bring me back on feeding tube," whatever.

Your directive is-

Okay

... also gonna highlight, the directive highlights exactly what you would want, and that would, if you want it to, can trump your POLST form if you had one.

"Well, I have this form that they said they do not want to be resuscitated," so that person can honor that do not resuscitate physician's orders for life-sustaining treatment, the POLST form, can be honored the same way as the advance healthcare directive and not change.

That's a fact.

Can we just go over and clarify what these terms mean, POLST, MOLST, advanced directive, DNRs,

Yeah, so these are...

Living

And as a first responder, you really need to know what the legality of these documents are.

So in the, again, if we're talking umbrella terms, advance directive is the umbrella term for pretty much all of these documents.

It's going to cover your POLST, your MOLST, your DNR, your living will.

Basically, it's in the word, advance directive.

There's something, at least in California, it's in every state, but it's probably called something else in every state.

It's called a POLST, P-O-L-S-T. That's a quick, easy thing to fill out where it's just like three questions, like, do you want to be resuscitated, meaning do you want CPR? Do you want to be intubated, which means placed on a machine? I'm generalizing everything here, and then three, would you want a feeding tube? Okay, so those are really big questions, but at least there's only three of those things, right? So that could be an advanced directive you fill out.

I would say year after year.

I'm all about dying naturally, but I feel like I'm young, and if I suddenly have a heart attack and In the grocery store, yes, I want to be resuscitated.

They're kind of big, so I'm going to keep it there because it's like, okay, talk to your loved ones about what you really want in detail.

And if you can, everybody, fill it out.

Fill out an advance directive or something called a POLST.

Out of interest, when people do come into hospital, let's say they don't have those things in place, what's the general protocol that happens if you don't know whether they want to be or don't want to be resuscitated?

They're called TPOP in Kansas.

They're called POLST or MOLST in other places.

They're called DNR or DNI in some hospital sittings.

And These documents are actual physician orders and they say things like, if my heart stops and I stop breathing, this is what I do or don't want you to do.