Healthcare professionals across disciplines routinely face situations in which patients are unable to provide informed consent due to impaired or fluctuating decision-making capacity. These circumstances require thoughtful and ethically grounded approaches to substitute and/or supported decision-making and guardianship. This webinar provides an in-depth examination of the ethical, legal, and clinical complexities that emerge when individuals cannot make decisions for themselves.
Participants will explore how to balance autonomy—honoring an individual’s right to direct their own care—with the obligations of beneficence and nonmaleficence, which require clinicians to act in the patient’s best interest while preventing harm. The training also emphasizes ensuring fair treatment across diverse patient populations, and fidelity, which underscores the importance of trust, honesty, and professional responsibility in every stage of the decision-making process.
The session will highlight strategies for minimizing ethical risk, protecting patient rights, and equip healthcare professionals with the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure ethically sound, patient-centered practice when informed consent cannot be obtained.
Learning Outcomes
- Define decision-making capacity, informed consent, substitute decision-making, supported decision-making, and guardianship.
- Differentiate between various types of surrogate decision-makers, and court-appointed guardians.
- Explain the ethical principles that guide practice when working with individuals unable to consent.
- Apply ethical decision-making frameworks to real-world scenarios involving vulnerable adults, or dependents who lack capacity.
