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The Ethics of Decision Making for the Critically Ill Elderly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Madelyn Anne Iris
Madelyn Anne Iris
Affiliation:
An anthropologist at the Buehler Center on Aging, McGaw Medical Center, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, as well as Assistant Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois
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Extract

The ethics of decision making for the critically ill elderly is an area of concern for all those involved in the decision-making process. The number of participants involved in decision making around end-of-life issues may be many: treatment and care decisions often bring together not only the patient and the physician, but the family, an extended medical care team, and impartial members of a hospital or institutional ethics committee. In addition, treatment and care decisions made at the end of life occur in a variety of settings, not just the acute care hospital. Elderly patients who are critically ill, or in the final days or weeks of life, are found in intensive care or medical units of hospitals, in hospital and nursing home based hospice programs, in long-term care settings such as skilled nursing facilities, or at home, where they are tended by family caregivers. Differences in patterns of decision making regarding the care and treatment of critically ill older adults can be found across these settings, and decisions often vary according to the roles of the participants.

Type
Special Section: Elder Ethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Spring 1995 , pp. 135 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes

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