Physicians have a responsibility to assess elderly patients for conditions that could affect their ability to drive safely and to be familiar with state laws that govern physician duty to report impaired drivers.
A description of a medical school curriculum that integrates the knowledge and skills necessary in caring for the elderly into primary care residency programs.
There are nonpharmacological approaches to managing behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia and the difficulties associated with evaluating and implementing these approaches.
A clinical case shows how medical commercialism poses risks to patients without symptoms who get full body scans. Screening for pre-morbid disease detection is valuable if implemented correctly but calls for physician caution.
The current Medicare operation—reimbursing medical goods and services to a growing number of people without basing the reimbursement benefit on the actual cost of the services—is unsustainable, but there are some possible remedies.
Physicians have a professional obligation and, in many states, a legal duty to report drivers whose functional or cognitive impairments may pose a safety hazard.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.