Dr Vaishali Phatak joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Mary Perkinson and Meghan K. Ramirez: “Leveraging Cross-Campus Expertise to Contribute to Dementia Care Through Music.”

Physicians and surrogates should take patients' preferences into account in making clinical intervention decisions, even if the patients have been found to lack decision-making capacity.

Physicians and surrogates should take patients' preferences into account in making clinical intervention decisions, even if the patients have been found to lack decision-making capacity.

Physicians and surrogates should take patients' preferences into account in making clinical intervention decisions, even if the patients have been found to lack decision-making capacity.

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.

Viewing dementia as a distinct disease promotes funding for research but may stigmatize those who have dementia and lead to disinvestment in caregiving.

Arts participation can counterbalance the social stigma of Alzheimer’s disease by fostering the autonomy and creativity of those with the diagnosis.

Patients with dementia need social supports and opportunities and acceptance of their disability in order to feel hopeful despite their functional decline.

Authentic partnerships with people with dementia motivate full social participation and resist fatalism around experiences of illness.

There is evidence of the benefits of music for health and wellness, but current US clinical practice does not yet commonly incorporate arts-based interventions.