POLST Forms for California & Texas Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment
Download the POLST form you need
If you are helping a parent, spouse, or loved one with serious health concerns, dementia, assisted living, memory care, or long-term care decisions, The Way to Aging can help your family understand your options. Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment form tells emergency personnel what treatments you would want in the event of a medical emergency. The current standard of care during an emergency is for medical professionals to do everything possible to attempt to save a life. Not everyone wants this treatment, and the POLST provides the option for you to (1) confirm this is the treatment you want or (2) to state what level of treatment you do want.
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Yolanda Lawler, MASM, RCFE
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Gerontologist | Founder & CEO, The Way to Aging
Talk with Yolanda Lawler, Gerontologist and Founder of The Way to Aging. We help families navigate senior care, assisted living, memory care, board and care, home care and geriatric care management throughout California and Texas.
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Yolanda Lawler, MASM, RCFE, is a gerontologist and the Founder and CEO of The Way to Aging, helping older adults and their families navigate senior living, dementia care, geriatric care management, assisted living, memory care, residential care and the complex decisions associated with aging.
Her professional and educational background combines formal training in gerontology and psychology with hands-on leadership experience in senior living, memory care, home care, hospice-related care coordination and services for older adults.
Senior Living & Executive Leadership Experience
Before founding The Way to Aging, Yolanda gained extensive experience working directly with older adults and within the senior-care industry.
Yolanda’s professional background includes serving as an Executive Director/Administrator at two large national senior living communities as well as serving as an Executive Director for a caregiving company. Yolanda has lead a staff of more than 100 employees.
As a Gerontologist Yolanda experience encompasses assisted living, memory care, senior living communities, home care and hospice/end-of-life environments.
Yolanda’s combination of gerontology education and hands-on senior-living leadership gives her a perspective that goes far beyond simply locating a community. She understands the day-to-day realities of resident care, staffing, family communication, dementia support, senior-living operations, and the challenges families face as a loved one’s care needs change. This experience allows her to help families evaluate not only where a senior can live today, but also whether a community can provide the right support as their needs evolve.
POLST Forms – Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment
California & Texas
A POLST form is a portable medical order. In other words, it goes with you, the patient, wherever you are living.
- A POLST form gives medical orders to emergency personnel based on your current medical situation. The form gives you choices about life-sustaining treatment, such as CPR, medical procedures, and feeding.
- POLST forms tell other providers what you want. During a medical emergency, if you can talk, providers will ask you what you want. POLST forms are used only when you cannot communicate and you need medical care. When that is the situation, the POLST form orders providers to give you the treatments you chose.
- POLST forms are completed with your doctor after discussing your medical conditions, what is important to you, what may happen in the future. Together you review your treatment options and make decisions. You can also change your decisions based on your health at any time. A doctor, physician assistant, or nurse practitioner must sign the POLST form for it to be valid. POLST forms vary by state.
- POLST is voluntary. You make the choice about having a POLST form and you can change it whenever as you deem necessary.
California & Texas
POLST in Emergency Situations – Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment
In the event of an emergency, first responders such as the firefighters, police, or EMTs, will look for your POLST when they arrive at your home. That is why we encourage you to have it in an obvious, visible place (on your refrigerator or behind your front door). The POLST allows emergency medical personnel to make the care decisions you want when time is of the essence.