Medical Decision-Making in Dementia Patients

Abstract

CME Educational Objectives 1. Know how to assess “capacity” in patients with dementia. 2. Know informed consent rights for patients with dementia. 3. Deliniate the difference between “best interests” in a patient with dementia vs. “standard of care.” A 78-year-old widowed female with a history of cognitive decline and breast cancer treated with lumpectomy 5 years earlier is admitted to the medical service of a community hospital after suffering several weeks of increasingly intense and intractable back pain. Accompanying the patient is her only child, an unmarried adult daughter with whom she has been living with for several years.