When the ambulance brings your neighbor to one of our emergency rooms with a serious illness, there are important decisions to make. What does she want? What does she not want? Who will make decisions for her when she can’t speak or think clearly, as is often the case when we are at our sickest?

Her daughter arrives, but realizes that she and her mother never talked about this kind of thing, leaving her the stressful burden of guessing what her mother would choose.

Last week we trained a group of caregivers from area nursing homes to help their residents fill out the Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment. POLST is a national movement to help those with the most serious illnesses specify what medical interventions they would and wouldn’t want. The POLST form then goes with the patient across care settings as a doctor’s order.

Ours is the largest community in Maine to start using POLST, through a wonderful, coordinated effort of hospitals, EMS providers and long-term care facilities.

Today is National Healthcare Decisions Day, dedicated to the importance of discussing what you want if you become seriously ill, sharing those wishes with your loved ones and deciding who will speak for you if needed. Most of us have heard of advance directives, yet few of us have one. The Maine form is on both the St. Mary’s hospital and CMMC websites, giving us all the chance to be heard, no matter what.

Elizabeth Keene, Vice President of Mission

Integration, St. Mary’s Health System, Lewiston

Bruce Condit MD, Director of Palliative Care, Central Maine Medical Center, Lewiston