Ethical and Legal Issues of Geriatrics

The anesthesiologist’s expanding comprehensive role in perioperative medicine necessitates an increasing awareness of and involvement in the ethics of health care. The perioperative physician must not only be the surgical patient’s medical advocate, but their ethical advocate as well. The elderly patient presents a myriad of unique and challenging ethical issues that require an understanding of both the distinctive health care issues of the geriatric population and the underlying principles of modern health care ethics. Anesthesiologists, because of their unique role in perioperative and critical care medicine, must take an active role in the development and implementation of health care institutional ethical policies and procedures during the perioperative period.