NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDICAL, LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES OF ELDERCARE
Prominent Professionals Addressed Vital Concerns of Industry in Crisis
(NEW YORK, NY) October 1, 2007 - SeniorBridge participated in a national educational conference on medical and legal issues of eldercare. The all day forum, “Competency and Capacity, Issues in Aging,” took place in San Antonio, TX on September 28, 2007, and was co-sponsored with the South, West, and Panhandle Consortium of Geriatric Education Centers of Texas (SWAP-C GEC) at the University of Texas Health Science Center.
SeniorBridge is a leading national provider of in-home care for clients with complex health conditions. The primary goal of the SWAP-C GEC is to facilitate the improvement of patient care for the elderly through faculty development in geriatrics and gerontology throughout the health disciplines at medical, dental, nursing, and allied and associate health schools in universities and community colleges.
The primary goal of the conference was to increase the knowledge and expertise of today’s and tomorrow’s health care and legal professionals in the critical medico-legal and ethical issues surrounding care of our elderly population.
Topics covered included:
- Recent legislative changes impacting the management of chronic, intractable pain in aging patients; and impacting nursing home care
- Clinically validated tools that assess mental capacity in the elderly
- Recognizing and reporting physical and emotional abuse, as well as financial exploitation of the elderly
- Ethical issues in geriatrics; management of geriatric patients with advanced illness when further active treatment is no longer desirable or feasible, or when treatment is not likely to improve the patient’s quality of life
- Indications for guardianship of an older adult; issues of informed consent for an incompetent patient, confidentiality and duty to disclose
- Impact of ethnic traditions of older adults on the medical and legal decision-making process
The keynote speaker was Dr. Jason Karlawish, an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, Fellow of the Center for Bioethics and Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Associate Director of the Memory Disorders Clinic and the Director of the Alzheimer's Disease Center’s Education and Information Transfer Core. Dr. Karlawish also serves on the SeniorBridge Professional Advisory Board.
About SeniorBridge
SeniorBridge, founded in 2000 and with offices throughout the U.S., is a national provider of in-home care for clients who have multiple chronic health conditions. The company’s unique approach addresses the total well-being of clients and their families through a comprehensive program that includes assessment, planning, coordination of a multidisciplinary team, and advocacy, all led by a geriatric care manager. For more information please visit the web site at www.seniorbridge.com.