Part 1
I obtained the Advanced Directive from the website www.caringinfo.org . The CaringInfo is a program undertaken by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) which aims at putting down mechanism to improve health care at the end of life. The law in Florida provides that every competent adult also known as the principal has the right to make their decisions regarding their healthcare. However, it also provides the principal to name a competent adult to make decisions on their behalf in case of any incapacitation (Halpern, 2012). The Florida Living Will further allows an individual to state their wishes in the event that they get into a vegetative state.
The Florida Advanced Directive is accompanied by legal documents that empower an individual to chose or refuse a given type of medical treatment. It also gives them an opportunity to request the kind of medical treatment they want. The Advanced Directive provides that an individual delegate their autonomy to a surrogate in case they will be incapacitated. It further ensures that a person has made prior wishes that will be put into consideration once they have fallen into a situation where they cannot validly make decisions. However, for it to become an official document, it must be accompanied by a signature and other witness provisions.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
When I began to fill out the forms, I started with a logical approach, that which is aligned with my religious and moral tenets. It is always regarded as a taboo for an individual to think about their end of life, and therefore it was an emotional moment for me. Although it is not a difficult thing to make plans for my end of life, it came with some heaviness of heart to imagine the situation my family will be facing. Alspach (2013) asserted that the emotional aspect of filling the Advanced Directive is regarded the most significant as a result of the toll it has on the loved ones. It was, therefore, a difficult moment for my brother and I, whom I shared with the filled copies.
Part 2
A Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) is a type of a Do Not Resuscitate Orders (DNR). It is an approach widely used in the end-of-life care in the US. It gives providers an opportunity to speak with their patients and subsequently create medical orders that health care workers are required to honor in case of a medical crisis. It further allows an individual to choose the level of medical treatment they want during an emergency.
The form is therefore primarily filled during an emergency or a medical crisis. It acts to empower the patient to take more control over the treatments they desire and avoid those which they do not. It is also used in case the patient is not competent to speak or make decisions for themselves. Some of the notable patients that are in dire need of the POLST form include the terminally ill, cancer patients, and heart problems amongst others.
Zive et al. (2015) noted that the POLST is primarily filled with a medical officer or a health care professional after a conversation with the patient. It is a medical order that must be filled by a health care professional to gain validity. Some states in the US also require patients or surrogates to fill part of the form. Even in the states that the patient's signature is not needed, they are encouraged to do so as a form of showing an agreement with the medical orders.
Fundamentally, most states require the signature of the medical professional to make the document valid. However, as a way of improving legitimacy, states require an additional signature from the patient too.
Part 3
Several significant differences exist between the advanced health care directive and the POLST form. First, the POLST notes the wishes of the patients in the form of a medical order, something that does not happen in an advanced directive. Whereas the advanced directive can help an individual to identify their surrogate, the same cannot be said about the POLST form. The advanced directive further ensures that an individual explains explicitly the treatments they want and those they don't want during a medical crisis. On the contrary, a POLST is a medical order that guides the health professionals to make future medical judgments depending on their current medical conditions. The POLST form is signed by the healthcare professional with the addition of the patient if necessary (Zive et al. 2015). However, in the advanced directive signing varies from state to state. However, in most situations, an individual, their surrogates, family members, and witnesses can all sign (Halpern, 2012). An advanced directive can employ a surrogate while a POLST cannot.
Lastly, nurses have an essential role in assuring the patients of their rights in choosing the healthcare intervention they deem fit and reject those which they resent. In medical ethics, this is referred to as autonomy and nurses are at the center stage in enhancing its practice. Nurses must first understand that patients have the liberty to choose the type of support, care, and treatment they receive (Alspach, 2013). As such, they must act in tandem with the healthcare policies and codes of conduct that clearly define this position. Furthermore, nurses must ensure that they play a role in empowering the patient by teaching them of their rights pertaining to autonomy. Whenever tensions and frictions come due to a conflict between the patient's choice and professional considerations, proper guidance should be made. It also calls on the nurses to engage in more extensive consultations with relatives to ensure that the right decisions are made.
References
Alspach, J. G. (2013). Core Curriculum for Critical Care Nursing-E-Book . Elsevier Health Sciences.
Halpern, S. D. (2012, August). Shaping end-of-life care: behavioral economics and advance directives. In Seminars in respiratory and critical care medicine (Vol. 33, No. 04, pp. 393-400). Thieme Medical Publishers.
Zive, D. M., Fromme, E. K., Schmidt, T. A., Cook, J. N., & Tolle, S. W. (2015). Timing of POLST form completion by cause of death. Journal of pain and symptom management , 50 (5), 650-658.
