Abstract
Decision making for incompetent elderly people is an increasingly serious issue for American society. The decision-making processes we choose will reflect choices among a number of ethical principles--those specifying the purpose of substituted judgment, those guiding the surrogate decision maker, and those used in choosing the surrogate--and depends as well on the way we construe the concept of decision-making competence.
MeSH terms
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Advance Directives*
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Aged*
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Chronic Disease
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Cognition
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Communication
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Comprehension
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Decision Making*
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Dementia* / psychology*
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Disclosure
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Ethical Analysis
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Ethics Committees
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Ethics Committees, Clinical
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Ethics*
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Ethics, Professional
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Euthanasia, Passive
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Evaluation Studies as Topic*
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Family
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Freedom*
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Hospitals
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Human Rights
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Humans
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Informed Consent*
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Interpersonal Relations
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Judicial Role
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Jurisprudence
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Life Support Care
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Mental Competency*
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Mental Disorders
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Mental Processes
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Mental Status Schedule
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Paternalism*
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Patient Care*
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Patient Compliance
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Patients*
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Persistent Vegetative State
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Personal Autonomy*
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Physicians
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Prevalence
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Prognosis
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Public Policy
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Quality of Life
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Reference Standards*
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Risk
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Risk Assessment
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Social Values*
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Statistics as Topic
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Third-Party Consent*
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Treatment Refusal*
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Withholding Treatment