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"WHAT TO DO WHEN A PATIENT LACKS CAPACITY - The degree and urgency with which to act on findings of impaired capacity depends on multiple factors, including the expected duration of impairment, the severity of the impairment, and the seriousness of the decision. Unless the urgency of a patient's medical condition requires that a substituted decision be made immediately, efforts should be made to identify and correct any reversible causes of the impairment [26]. This is particularly relevant in hospitalized patients with impaired capacity due to delirium. Treatment of the underlying causes of delirium may restore decision-making capacity. Patients with mild to moderate cognitive impairment that is not expected to fluctuate may benefit from more intensive efforts at education to improve understanding of the relevant facts, followed by reassessment of decision-making abilities. A randomized trial found that a memory and organizational aid given to patients with mild stage Alzheimer disease dementia (n = 80) improved performance on understanding, which in turn increased the likelihood of being judged capable of providing informed consent to enroll in a clinical trial [34]. This enhancement was also effective in a randomized trial with middle-aged and older adults with schizophrenia [35]. For patients whose impairments are severe enough that they are judged to lack the capacity to make a decision, there is a clear ethical obligation to seek out a substitute decision maker. Substitute or surrogate decision makers should ideally have been chosen by the patient in advance. In the absence of a designated surrogate, laws may vary in terms of which people can serve in this proxy role and their hierarchy; in general, the order is the spouse, adult children, parents, siblings, and other relatives. (See "Legal aspects in palliative and end of life care", section on 'Surrogate decision makers'.) When making a substituted decision, the proxy should take into consideration

" a post on how you can construct a disclaimer for your medical blog or podcast. This can be an important part of your site and can provide some limited protection against legal issues. "

"We launched this project because we believe a set of guidelines is very much needed either for medical professionals and patients, and pharma about using social media properly and legally. This open access guide created collaboratively by the most important online voices of pharma and web 2.0 was meant to help facilitate this process."

"We are seeing more patients with fewer doctors in the United States; our time spent at the hospital is limited by duty hours; there are increasing demands on documentation for medico legal purposes. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much of the horizon to fix these issues. So what are we to do? Here are some things that may be helpful and things that work for me:"

The usefulness of online social networking is undeniable and it's no surprise that physicians are embracing it. But…these tools present a minefield of legal and professional hazards for medical professionals who don't take the utmost care in how, what and where they post.

This is the homepage for the Web2Rights project funded by JISC and developed to help academics and students gain abetter understanding of IPR issues and other legal issues in relation to Web 2.0. The site includes use-cases, a blog and discussion forum and links to an ip toolkit and ip diagnostic tool which will take you through a project you are working on help identify any IPR issues which you need to consider.

An on-line tutorial developed by JISC and Intute on how to find copyright free images on the web for your work. The tutorial includes an overview of legal responsibilities in using images and provides an overview of different licensing models for digital images. It also gives details of some sites which individuals might want to take a look at.

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Wellpoint's Maine subsidiary sued the state of Maine when it refused to guarantee a 3% profit on the heads of 12,000 individual policy subscribers. They're spending close to $1 million on legal fees to fight the case, rather than use people's premiums to pay for medical coverage. || Quote from video: "I don't think ANYONE is worth $9 million a year; they spend $ millions on lobbyists--can they be sued for BRIBERY?