MSTAR Student Aradhana Verma and Drs. Chodos, Smith and Harrison Publish Article in JAGS

Aradhana Verma, a UCSF MSTAR student, and Drs. Anna Chodos, Alex Smith, and Krista Harrison published an article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society titled "Ethical Challenges in Caring for Unrepresented Adults: A Qualitative Study of Key Stakeholders". Unrepresented adults are those without the ability to make decisions for themselves and have no surrogate available to represent them. By interviewing stakeholders across multiple professions--including health care, legal and social services-- they found several common ethical challenges, such as weighing the patient's autonomy against ensuring their safety, and the large toll it takes on providers to wrestle with them.  By identifying these challenges, future work can identify earlier interventions in the care of unrepresented adults that may help address them.