End-of-life care: an Oregon innovation helps people avoid unwanted interventions

End-of-life care: an Oregon innovation helps people avoid unwanted interventions | OregonLive.com: Undesired treatments such as breathing machines, CPR and dialysis were withheld as requested 94 percent of the time, in a study of 870 nursing home residents in Oregon, West Virginia and Wisconsin. People spelled out their wishes with a document called Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or POLST.

Oregon caregivers developed POLST in the 1990s to overcome limits of advance directives such as living wills. Very ill or elderly people create those directives to outline treatment they want to have or avoid in a medical crisis. But those forms can be hard to find in an emergency or too vague to be useful.

Printed POLST forms are brightly colored for visibility and have check boxes to record specific preferences. An Oregon statewide electronic registry established in 2009 gives emergency medical technicians and hospital staff around-the-clock access to POLST orders. People are free to modify or revoke them at any time.

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