Professor Julian Hughes

Recent Speaker

Issues and decision-making in dementia care

June 22, 2010

Alzheimers Australia

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Dr. Julian Hughes is a consultant in old age psychiatry in Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, based at North Tyneside General Hospital, UK. He is also honorary professor of philosophy of ageing at the Institute for Ageing and Health in Newcastle University. He previously chaired the Philosophy Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and serves on the College's ethics sub-committee. His research interests center on philosophical and ethical issues that arise for people with dementia and their carers, with a particular interest in palliative care. Dr Hughes’ two goals for research are first, to build an understanding of the conceptual underpinning of clinical practice and second, to investigate the nature of ethical dilemmas inherent to clinical practice in relation to ageing.

Dr Julian Hughes read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford prior to studying medicine in Bristol. He then served in the Royal Air Force, but completed his higher training in psychiatry in Oxford and, at the same time, undertook a PhD in Philosophy at Warwick which brought together his interests in Wittgenstein and dementia.

Dr Julian Hughes was a member of the Dementia Working Party of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which reported in 2009. Before this appointment he was a special advisor on ethics and palliative care to the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which produced its guidelines on dementia in 2007. Julian was joint editor (with Dr Stephen Louw and Professor Steve Sabat) of Dementia: Mind, Meaning, and the Person (OUP, 2006) and editor of Palliative Care in Severe Dementia (Quay Books, 2006). A co-authored book (with Dr Clive Baldwin), Ethical Issues in Dementia Care: Making Difficult Decisions (Jessica Kingsley) also appeared in 2006. A new book has appeared in 2010, co-edited with Professor Mari Lloyd-Williams (a palliative physician in Liverpool, UK) and Professor Greg Sachs (a physician in Indiana, USA) entitled Supportive Care for the Person with Dementia, again published by OUP.