Hn 450 Legal Issues and Ethics Assignment Unit 4.Docx

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Pamalynn M. Brault Unit 4 Assignment Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Services HN450 Dr. Phillip Farmer May 17, 2015 Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of Dementia in elderly adults. Dementia is the term used for most brain aliments in elderly adults. It refers to anything from Alzheimer’s, to Parkinson’s, etc. It basically means that for whatever reason the brains cells are either dying or no longer functioning properly. It can start out with simple forgetting to do tasks, such as balancing a check book to issues that are more serious like leaving on a stove to forgetting where you are at when you are driving a vehicle for instance. It progresses faster than normal Dementia. It begins with little things like forgetting your keys, to not being able to retrace your steps when you lose things. To eventually not being able to control your bodily functions, or recognize loved ones. This leads to an ethical issue amongst those who treat elderly adults as to when they are not able to give legal consent for treatment. Are they able to give informed consent when they may forget that they ever spoke with you to begin with? As with any client you must give them time to ask questions and make sure they understand their treatment. In some cases a guardian is put into place to protect the client in both medical and financial issues. In this case any treatment or change in treatment would go through the guardian for the informed consent process. When working with vulnerable clients we are considered mandatory reporters, what that means is that if we notice signs of anything out of the norm, if we suspect abuse or neglect it is our jobs and could mean loss of our license if we do not call and report the abuse. With the elderly often this is a judgment call as do to thin skin they may bruise or tare easily. When in doubt always report. Sometimes
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