nevada polst

 A POLST form helps individuals with serious illness or frailty for whom their health care professional wouldn’t be surprised if they died within a year communicate their treatment decisions. It is designed to improve patient care by creating a portable medical order form (the POLST form) that records patients’ treatment wishes so that emergency personnel know what treatments the patient wants in the event of a likely medical emergency, taking the patient’s current medical condition into consideration. The current standard of care during an emergency is for emergency medical services (EMS) to attempt everything possible to attempt to save a life. Not all patients who are seriously ill or frail want this treatment and the POLST provides the option for them to: (1) confirm this is the treatment they want or (2) to state what level of treatment they do want.  

 The POLST form documents the medical order that helps give patients more control over receiving treatments they do want to receive—and avoiding treatments they do not want to receive—in the event they cannot speak for themselves during a medical crisis. All competent adults should have advance directives, documenting who they want to speak for them whenever they lack capacity to speak for themselves. The POLST form is different but complements an advance directive.