Dementia related Ethical Challenges in Georgia

Abstract

This article addresses dementia-related ethical issues from different perspectives: patient, caregiver, healthcare system medical professionals, and society. Dementia leads to cognitive decline, reducing decision-making autonomy and necessitating surrogate decision-makers for care. Ethical challenges arise in balancing autonomy, dignity, safety, injury risks, and independence. In Georgia, family members, especially women, often play a significant role in both medical care and daily activities, making this balance is particularly challenging. Addressing ethical challenges requires raising public awareness, strengthening the healthcare system, training medical professionals, and providing support and education for caregivers. Because the institutionalization of ethics remains a weak aspect of the healthcare system, the role of existing clinical ethics committees should be expanded to facilitate ethical decision-making for patients with dementia. These efforts are essential for fostering dignity, autonomy, and the overall quality of life, health and well-being of patients with dementia in Georgia. Acknowledgement. The work reported in this publication was funded by the NIH-Fogarty International Trauma Training Program at the University of Iowa (2D43TW007261-11). The authors gratefully acknowledge all members of the iCREATE for their work on the project overall and for the contributions of project documentation used in this manuscript.