Assessing Capacities Of Older Adults

This book demonstrates how to address practical and ethical challenges when assessing older adults with neurocognitive disorders, like dementia. Expanding on the ABA/APA's Assessment of Older Adults with Diminished Capacity: A Handbook for Psychologists, it explores the tension between ensuring a client's autonomy while protecting them from harm, particularly when decision-making capacity or daily living skills are impaired. Chapters cover a range of complex issues in careful detail, including financial exploitation, undue influence, sexual consent, and medical aid in dying.

Learn about the key issues when assessing and treating older adults with mental health problems: Expert guidance through the key topics Highlights the best assessment and treatment practices Addresses diversity, ethical, and health system issues Full of real-life case examples Resources in the appendix to test your knowledge More about the book Mental health practitioners are encountering an ever-growing number of older adults and so an up-to-date and comprehensive text addressing the special considerations that arise in the psychological assessment and treatment of this population is vital. This accessible handbook does just that by introducing the key topics that psychologists and other health professionals face when working with older adults. Each area is introduced and then the special considerations for older adults are explored, including specific ethical and healthcare system issues. The use of case examples brings the topics further to life. An important feature of the book is the interweaving of diversity issues (culture, race, sexuality, etc.) within the text to lend an inclusive, contemporary insight into these important practice components. The Pikes Peak Geropsychology Knowledge and Skill Assessment Tool is included in an appendix so readers can test their knowledge, which will be helpful for those aiming for board certification in geropsychology (ABGERO). This an ideal text for mental health professionals transitioning to work with older clients, for those wanting to improve their knowledge for their regular practice, and for trainees or young clinicians just starting out.

Part of the Wiley Series in Clinical Geropsychology, Changes in Decision-Making Capacity in Older Adults: Assessment and Intervention helps to familiarize you with the legal and social contexts for decision making in potentially impaired individuals. Editors Sara Qualls and Michael Smyer have brought together a notable team of international contributors to provide you with a unique framework of the legal, social, and psychological approaches to assessing the ability of older adults to make decisions.

This book discusses theoretical issues, standards, and professional considerations arising when legal and health practitioners undertake legal capacity assessments in the context of wills, enduring powers of attorney and advance health directives. The potential loss of cognition can erode autonomy as individuals lose the ability to make their own legally recognised decisions. This is an inescapable problem with significant legal, social, health and policy repercussions. This work synthesises and critically analyses the existing literature, including some of the best assessment models and guiding principles internationally, to generate a new methodology and understanding of what capacity assessment best practice means. This includes the impact of assessments on individual autonomy - the ideal method building upon respect for both autonomy as well as fundamental human rights. The triggers to assess capacity, who to involve in the assessment process, as well as how to conduct that assessment process are discussed. The crucial relationship between the legal and health professionals involved in assessments, including growing concerns around practitioner liability, is also explored. This analysis is undertaken through the innovative use of a therapeutic jurisprudence lens, the effect of which is to contribute new knowledge to this complex field.

This open access book aims to provide a comprehensive but practical overview of the knowledge required for the assessment and management of the older adult with or at risk of fragility fracture. It considers this from the perspectives of all of the settings in which this group of patients receive nursing care. Globally, a fragility fracture is estimated to occur every 3 seconds. This amounts to 25 000 fractures per day or 9 million per year. The financial costs are reported to be: 32 billion EUR per year in Europe and 20 billon USD in the United States. As the population of China ages, the cost of hip fracture care there is likely to reach 1.25 billion USD by 2020 and 265 billion by 2050 (International Osteoporosis Foundation 2016). Consequently, the need for nursing for patients with fragility fracture across the world is immense. Fragility fracture is one of the foremost challenges for health care providers, and the impact of each one of those expected 9 million hip fractures is significant pain, disability, reduced quality of life, loss of independence and decreased life expectancy. There is a need for coordinated, multi-disciplinary models of care for secondary fracture prevention based on the increasing evidence that such models make a difference. There is also a need to promote and facilitate high quality, evidence-based effective care to those who suffer a fragility fracture with a focus on the best outcomes for recovery, rehabilitation and secondary prevention of further fracture. The care community has to understand better the experience of fragility fracture from the perspective of the patient so that direct improvements in care can be based on the perspectives of the users. This book supports these needs by providing a comprehensive approach to nursing practice in fragility fracture care.