Scott will stay in Winston-Salem to practice law with a local firm. Tiffany Bennett s client asks about Medicaid. Students need to know about some of the medical issues that come up, especially involving mental capacity. An elder law attorney also needs to understand ethical principles that society uses when dealing with impaired or dying people. The ethical principle of autonomy underlies many of the laws that students learn about in this course.
Beneficence is a principle underlying our protection of incompetent elders.
When there is no law that clearly controls, lawyers, courts, physicians, and society look for the ethical rules to guide us. We have many difficult decisions to make as our society gets older - both on a policy level and for individuals. Ethical principles can be our guiding lights as we struggle with these decisions. We also will tour one of the Intensive Care Units as part of this class. We were fortunate to have a class on mental capacity issues taught by Jeff Williamson, M.D. , of the medical school faculty.