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Form helps enforce patient's wishes

By Tedford J. Taylor No topic is a less likely conversation-starter than our eventual deaths. Still, there is a lot to talk about.

By Tedford J. Taylor

No topic is a less likely conversation-starter than our eventual deaths. Still, there is a lot to talk about.

When polled, about 90 percent of people presented with end-of-life scenarios prefer the prospect of dying at home with family and a plan for treatment for comfort, rather than unlimited care in an intensive care unit (ICU). Does that surprise anyone?

Nearly 40 years ago, the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan, distraught as they watched machines keep their daughter alive, launched a court battle in New Jersey to discontinue care they believed only prolonged their family agony. That litigation resulted in the New Jersey Supreme Court recognizing the "right to die" naturally and with dignity in our era of high-technology medicine.

That right was secured when a 2011 law, signed by Gov. Christie, set in motion this year's unveiling of the new Practitioner Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form. When the two-page form is completed and signed by both the patient and doctor, POLST is literally "doctor's orders," and is included in the patient's records. That makes it fundamentally different from the advance directives or living wills that many people have had for years.

POLST is for patients who know they are, or abruptly could be, near the end of their lives. It is strongly recommended for people in nursing homes and hospice care, those suffering an advanced life-limiting illness, and the frail and weak challenged by routine daily activities.

Patients complete the form with their doctors, beginning with a statement of the "goals of care." Just as the medical record of a patient's tests and previous diagnoses guides treatment, so does POLST.

Slightly more than one in five deaths in the United States occurs in the ICU. Most of those deaths befall people who, if medicine can help enough during their crisis, will return to a full life. A humane society does no less.

But for a frail, elderly patient living in a care facility with advanced Alzheimer's disease who suffers a heart attack, we often do too much. POLST is that person's voice in the final medical emergency when she or he cannot speak, telling family and medical professionals which treatments are permitted and which are not.

To help the conversation, the Ethics Committee at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton makes available information about POLST and the more familiar advance directives.

An advance directive names a medical representative in the event we cannot make our own decisions. They are a good idea for all adults, including everyone in good health. And patients who know they are nearing the end certainly should have a directive. But they are not a substitute for POLST, which is a binding medical order that allows or declines specific treatments. Without a completed POLST, the medical representative will have to make those painful decisions.

It is healthy to love life, so it is natural to avoid thinking of our deaths. Many patients, though, bravely and maturely affirm their lives by making their own decisions about end-of-life care while they can. For them, their families, and their doctors, considering and completing the POLST form is an act of love and strength that begins with a conversation.