Work in Progress
Engaging People Living with Dementia in Decision-Making
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• partnering with people with different kinds of disabilities, including dementia, their family care partners and health care professionals to identify strategies and barriers to decision-making; and
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• Identifying ways to support families and healthcare professionals’ capacities to engage people living with dementia in decision-making.
In order to better support the practice of all health care professionals and staff, best practice guidelines should be developed which addresses how to:
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• Engage people who are living with dementia in health care decision-making; and
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• Maximize the capacity of people living with dementia to participate in their health care decisions.

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• Ageist and ableist attitudes toward older people who have disabilities;
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• Inadequate understanding of dementia and its impact on decisional capacity;
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• Staffing issues that result in lack of time and resources to support a person’s capacity;
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• Lack of knowledge of legal rights and duties in relation to health care consent; and
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• Health care institution emphasis on patient outcome over decision-making processes.
International and domestic laws are clear that capacity to make a health care decision depends on the specific decision in question, and that every adult should, at the outset, be presumed capable of making their own health care decisions. As such, people living with dementia and other disabilities that impact their ability to understand information are entitled to make some or all of their health care decisions at different times in their lives—depending on their ability to understand information and communicate their preferences at the relevant time. Research also indicates that decisional capacity can vary across the dementia journey—even within a single day—and that trauma, stress and other factors can further undermine capacity. In contrast, other factors, such as support with decision-making and communication, can enhance decisional capacity.




Related Files
Below you will find additional, relevant and specific documentation, backgrounders, research, resources, media releases and summaries that have been, or will be incorporated into our final publications and study papers.
If you have questions about these or other specific documents, please reach out to BCLI using our contact page or at the bottom of each page of our website.