Case Study

Case Study

Case Study

Overview of the Case

Linda is 65 years old. She currently lives in her own home and is supported by her son, Tony. Tony helps Linda by taking her shopping, usually once per week. Linda was diagnosed with dementia 2 years ago and Tony also accompanies Linda to her healthcare appointments.Despite taking medication to address the effects of dementia, lately, Linda has begun to experience increasing agitation, confusion and restlessness. This culminated in Linda becoming distressed at her local garden centre as she didn't know where she was, or how she had come to be there. Fortunately, a member of staff was acquainted with Linda, and managed obtained Tony's contact details from Linda's mobile phone. Having being contacted, Tony attended the garden centre to collect Linda. By this point, Linda was extremely distressed.

Key Decision in the Case

After the garden incident Tony was immensely worried about the safety of Linda, because of her growing restfulness and intermittent confusion during the day when he is at work. Thus, after evaluating all the options Tony took the decision of locking Linda inside the house when he is out at work.

Ethical Issues

Achieving an ethical decision requires some knowledge of the concept that patients have of their own identity, their relationships, their ideas about the past and the future and that of their aspirations and intentions. Obviously, the doctor cannot know all of the patient, but know something of what your values, life goals and your lifestyle should be priority for intentionally making an ethical decision.

All this is made ??more difficult when the sick to which we refer has a neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's disease is the most frequent in dementia syndromes affecting older people, and in which there are considerations that in a first phase disease is plausible recognize a certain autonomy to consider your future, your care or the quality of later life.

If you consider that there are four conditions necessary for a patient to participate in making ethical decisions: competition, willingness, understanding and knowledge of the disease, what happens then to make decisions regarding future as other major aspects: revive or not, surgical intervention or not, moisturize artificially or not? Likewise, the management of breakthrough infections and the difficulty, for example, the feeding of patients with a dementia syndrome in advanced stage lead to considerable loading dose team who is treating.

Therefore, the participation of all members of the family will be of enormous worth to those four legs of imaginary table have to keep balanced and that we understand as competition inferred as evaluative, voluntary , which is introduced into the influence of their own autonomy, and analyzes issues such as: persuasion, manipulation or coercion; knowledge of the disease or information, relative to the level of involvement of the patient, and understanding credit the final attitude taken.

Dementia is not always the same (never the same) in all patients, either in intensity or severity to how it began to ...