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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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The vote of acute medical inpatients
— a prospective study | | Author(s) | Antoine Bosquet, Amar Medjkane, Doru Voitel-Warneke |
| Journal title | Journal of Aging and Health, vol 21, no 5, August 2009 |
| Pages | pp 699-712 |
| Source | http://www.sagepublications.com |
| Keywords | Elections ; In-patients ; Mental disorder ; Dementia ; Social surveys ; France. |
| Annotation | There may be ethical issues associated with allowing certain inpatients to vote as some may be cognitively impaired. During the 2007 elections in France, the authors conducted a prospective observational study on voting among hospital patients. Patients in an Internal Medicine and Geriatric Department on election day were included. The primary outcome was the turnout among registered inpatients, and secondary outcomes were Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores and reasons for abstention. Of 142 inpatients (mean age 73 years), 84 were eligible to vote, and 22 actually voted (turnout 25.2%). Among the voters, 23% had an MMSE score of less than 12; 58% of abstentions were procedure-related. In this study, some inpatients did not vote as a result of procedural issues. When patients with severe cognitive impairment vote, there is a potential risk of vote diversion. Voting procedures should be improved to give inpatients easier access to the ballot, while protecting them from the risk of fraud. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100929008 A |
| Classmark | VLE: LF7: E: EA: 3F: 765 |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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