Dotty Scott discusses why employers should keep employees' medical directives accessible to EMTs and update them when laws change or people move states. A personal story about a husband taken by ambulance illustrates why having directives ready matters in an emergency.
Medical directives. If you have someone working with you, it would— I had some CERT training when I lived in the Columbia River Gorge. That's community emergency community response team. And to be able to know something about the person who just fell off the ladder, or got, you know, run over in the parking lot, whatever, if you have their medical directive in the office, you can run in and get it and give it to the EMTs when they arrive.
So are you talking about a medical directive for each employee that might be there?
Correct.
A living will. They might be reluctant.
They might be reluctant, and you're like, well, so if you slip and hit your head, I have to know. They need to know, and it might be news to them, so you will be training. But that has become— I mean, that saved the day when I had my husband passed in the car seat next to me, and he was in the ambulance and arrived in the emergency room, and the doctor an hour later came out and said, do you have his living will? Medical directive and living will are for the most part, the same thing. And if you move from one state to another, please get a new one, because laws vary between states. And always keep it current, because you don't want someone to walk in with, "I've got it," and it's from the year before and it's different. You might have changed your mind about something. So keeping things current, keeping them available, is enormous. Back to the matter at hand with the employees, you're, you're not violating their privacy. You just want to know, as will the doctor, what they want to do if they cannot speak for themselves. That's all. And if they say no, just put it in your notes. You're protecting yourself as an employer.
