HLT POL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Surrogate Decision-Maker, Healthcare Proxy, Dementia

• School: UCLA
• Department: Health Policy and Management
• Course: HLT POL 100
• Professor: Marcy Boroff

Document Summary

Health care proxies, guardianships/conservatorships and power of attorney. Capacity to consent is integral to informed consent. So, let"s review by going over the concepts we discussed in week 5 when discussing informed consent. The definition of informed consent stated that in order for the patient"s consent to be valid, he or she must be considered competent to make the decision and that the consent must be voluntary. If a patient is unable to give informed consent, what happens next depends on what guidelines or legal documents exist to provide direction to the health care provider and the family. The goal of the health care provider is to figure out what the patient would want to happen if they were able to make a decision. If the patient has a surrogate decision making tool, those legal documents are followed since they provide insight into what the patient would want.