On Feb. 14, WellStar will continue to roll out an updated Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) - a form / order that ensures a patient’s treatment wishes about end-of-life care are honored. The new, hot pink POLST form replaced the goldenrod form and is more user-friendly.
WellStar has used the POLST for more than five years. This new POLST is one step in our System’s efforts to ensure that our patients can express their wishes about their care at the end of their lives and are provided only the care that they desire.
The POLST is a one-page physician order that summarizes an Advance Directive (AD), which can be up to 15 pages in length. A POLST is an order. An AD is not an order, only an expression of a patient’s wishes. A POLST is a transferable document that should be sent home with the patient or to another care facility. EMS technicians and other medical professionals will honor the POLST because it is an order.
Please encourage your patients to have an AD. Everyone should have an AD, especially everyone in the hospital or who has a chronic disease or is at the end-of-life. A POLST converts the AD to an active order. We’re asking all WellStar team members involved in the clinical care of our patients to ensure patients with ADs also have a POLST.
Richard Cohen, M.D., Chair of WellStar’s Ethics Committee and POLST Committee leader rwcmd@mindspring.com
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