Making Medical Treatment Decisions for Unrepresented Older Adults: Updates to the AGS Position Statement

Moderator: Joseph Dixon, MD, MA

Making medical decisions on behalf of unrepresented older adults, who by definition lack medical decision-making capacity, an identifiable surrogate decision maker, and an advance directive, is likely to become increasingly common with demographic changes in the United States and remains a challenge in clinical practice. In order to assist AGS members in caring for unrepresented older adults, in 2024 the AGS Ethics Committee updated the 2017 “AGS Position Statement: Making Medical Treatment Decisions for Unbefriended Older Adults.” Learning Objectives: (1) discuss key findings from the updated position statement, including the rationale for changing the term “unbefriended” to “unrepresented”; (2) describe an ethical framework for decision-making on behalf of unrepresented older adults; (3) review findings from the literature on clinicians’ experiences in caring for unrepresented older adults.