We are now engaged in a movement that de-emphasizes the reliance on institutional forms of long-term care for disabled persons needing ongoing daily living assistance and converges on the use of non-institutional service providers abnd residential settings. In this latest edition of Ethics, Law and Aging Review , Kapp and ten expert contributors help us examine the forces and potential for changeing the long-term care industry (both positively and negatively) and address this paradigm shift from the inpersonal, public psychiatric institutions of the 1960s and 1970s to the present-day assisted living environments that have been fueled by economic, social, polictical, and legal forces. Most important ly, this volume identifies obstaclesto change and enlighten service providers, advocates, and key policy makers to the pitfalls that can largely interfere with positive outcomes as a result of long-term care deinstitutionalization. Topics explored include: Community-based alternatives for older adults with serious mental illness Failing consumer-directed alternatives to nursing homes Ethics of Medicare privatization

Although the topic of decision making capacity and older persons has been discussed in the literature, there still is much to be learned about it theoretically and practically. Experts continue to disagree about which standards are important for assessing decision making capacity. Questions such as: ìWhen should a capacity assessment be done on an older person and by whom?î are covered by the editors. Topics included in this volume are the application of an original framework for ethical decision making in long term care; an elder's capacity to decide to remain living alone in the community; the quest for helpful standardized instruments for evaluating decision making capacity; and end-of-life liability issues.

This volume explores the concept of safety as applied in the long term care context. Chapters examine the way in which the quest for safety may work either synergistically or adversely upon other worthy social goals. Among the initiatives considered are promoting the decision-making autonomy of patients/clients and their surrogates, enhancing the quality of care and quality of life available to long term care residents, and providing fair compensation for injured victims when serious harm occurs. Questions addressed that are of concern to legal and ethical theorists, social science researchers, and patient/client advocates include: To what extent do litigation and/or regulation accomplish the safety and other legitimate objectives of public policy in the long term care arena? Do the costs of various approaches outweigh the benefits in promoting safety and other goals? How do litigation and regulation compare with alternative approaches to achieving the same goals, in terms of an acceptable cost/benefit balance?

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Health care and human service professionals often experience anxiety about potential adverse legal repercussions for actions taken or not taken in the course of caring for patients or clients. In this volume, professionally distinguished and diverse authors discuss both the real and perceived legal liability context within which health and human service delivery to older persons takes place. The benefits and costs of litigious, legislative, and regulatory interventions on the quality of care and the quality of life for recipients of geriatric services is evaluated. Most important, chapters present suggestions for ways to effectively reduce or manage legal risks and anxieties while improving patient care. This volume fills a gap in the literature by providing careful and accurate analysis of legal issues rarely translated into practical and useful advice for health care and human service professionals.

Perplexing ethical questions emerge when conducting research involving older adult participants. Fundamental ethical concerns often grappled with include the ability to obtain truly voluntary and competent informed consent, the proper role of surrogate decision making in the research context, and the equitable selection of research subjects. This volume brings to the forefront a discussion of how to encourage essential research specifically designed to benefit older persons while protecting the legal and ethical rights of actual and potential older research participants. Highly qualified and diverse contributors analyze and explain some of the most salient and legal conundrums implicated in the design, conduct, interpretation, and application of research protocols that touch on these problems of aging and the aged.

Incisive and thought-provoking, this volume provides readers with a rich context for understanding the intersection between the law on bioethics and the central issues in bioethics.