March 20, 2021 – Reader’s Digest
How Cognitive Tests Strip Seniors of Their Rights
The system that’s been created to protect seniors can also work to support them—to see them as individuals with their own preferences and desires. Samir Sinha, the director of health policy research at the NIA, tells me a story about Josephine, a patient he got to know well. Josephine was blind and bedridden, and doctors wanted to place her in a nursing home—a decision she vehemently opposed. Some assessors may have seen Josephine as a woman incapable of deciding what was in her best interest.