Who Decides When You Can't? A Nurse’s Plain Guide to Advance Directives, POLST, and Medical Power of Attorney

Conversations about future medical decisions are uncomfortable but essential. In this 18-minute episode Nurse Jessi breaks down advance care planning into clear, practical steps: what each document does (advance directive/living will, durable healthcare power of attorney, POLST, and DNR), how they differ, who should sign them, and where they belong in your medical record. Using brief patient vignettes, Jessi offers conservative safety guidance for high-stakes decisions, sample conversation scripts for approaching loved ones and clinicians, and a checklist to ensure forms are valid and visible to care teams. The episode emphasizes that legal specifics vary by state and frames every recommendation as educational—not legal advice. Listeners leave with three concrete takeaways they can implement tonight (choose a proxy, start one scripted sentence, file a copy in their patient portal), a clear invite to subscribe, and encouragement to submit anonymized advance-care scenarios for future episodes.