Perhaps machine learning systems trained on patients’ electronic health records and social media footprints could be used as decision aids when patients lack capacity or face overwhelming decisions.

Despite challenges of decision making for unrepresented patients, few laws or policy statements offer solutions. This article offers 5 key things to do.

Protecting patients rather than informed consent should be the goal when the complexity of information overwhelms patients’ decision-making capacity.

Proliferation of innovative procedures and treatments in surgery has led to novel and distinct ethical challenges. Medicine can learn from plastic surgeons’ approaches to informed consent and potentially harmful treatments.

Monitoring surgeons’ capacities over time are rooted in professional duties to protect patients’ safety. Aging surgeons should undergo assessments and be encouraged to stop practicing before their diminished skill becomes too risky.

Consideration of what constitutes sufficient information about how donation protocols can interfere with a patient’s dying process is a key feature of consent processes.

Outcome-based payment more closely aligns payments with what patients want, which is better health rather than more health care. But these approaches remain challenging to implement.

Competency assessments for aging physicians raise concerns

Physicians’ perceptions of “difficult” encounters are related to perceived workload, job satisfaction, and communication training, similar to burnout.