The acronym stands for "physician orders for life-sustaining treatment".
They want specifics, and a document like those known as "physician orders for life-sustaining treatment" provides specifics more effectively than "allow a natural death".
As a registered nurse with five years' experience treating cancer patients — some at the end of life — I believe that medical orders signed by a doctor, known as Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, are invaluable.
When elderly invalids are rushed to the hospital, usually in no condition to discuss resuscitation, the bright pink form called Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or Polst, travels with them and can stand in as a doctor's order.
ADINA KAY-GROSS Port Washington, N.Y., Nov. 26, 2012 To the Editor: Your editorial highlights the benefits of end-of-life planning tools like advance directives and Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment and the savings that result when patients' wishes are honored.
(A recent editorial in The Journal of General Internal Medicine, by the way, argues that a do-not-resuscitate tattoo isn't actually an effective way to communicate end-of-life wishes; an advance directive or POLST – physician orders for life-sustaining treatment – works better).
The Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form translates patient treatment preferences into medical orders.
Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) need to be complete and consistent to allow health care personnel to honor patient preferences in a time of emergency.
To characterize the self-reported practices and opinions of nursing home (NH) health care professionals using the North Carolina Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment (MOST) form, an adaptation of the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) paradigm.
Since its original development in Oregon in 1993, Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) is quickly growing in popularity and prevalence as a method of communicating the end-of-life care preferences for the seriously ill and frail nationwide.
