Ways to Prepare:

• Recognize advanced frailty and protect yourself, or someone you love, from medical overtreatment.

• Avoid the emergency room and the hospital. Find home-based medical care if you can. Consider a shift to comfort care.

• Get a POLST or MOLST signed by a doctor and consider a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) or allow natural death (AND) order. Get a physician’s order to deactivate an implanted defibrillator. POLST and MOLST forms for each state are available at POLST Paradigm (Polst.org).

• Consider halting dialysis.

• Relax dietary and other restrictions. Enjoy the time that remains.