Decision Making and Ethical Issues in Dementia

Abstract

When I look back, I believe that in the past we didn’t think about ethical issues in dementia care so much. We just did what we thought is best for our patient. I remember we were often quite astonished when we got the patient with dementia with a broken hip back from the surgery without being operated, because he wasn’t able to sign the informed consent for the procedure. Or further more we didn’t discussed a lot when we prolonged patient’s life in the terminal stage of dementia, administrating infusions, antibiotics, feeding tubes, and not to mention giving CPR. Everything to save a life, because this is what health care workers do, and most of relatives want to hear: “We did everything possible to save him”. But what would that certain individual with dementia want? Well he/she could no longer tell.