Assessing Decision-Making Capacity in Patients with Communication Impairments

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 691-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
MOLLY CAIRNCROSS ◽  
ANDREW PETERSON ◽  
ANDREA LAZOSKY ◽  
TENEILLE GOFTON ◽  
CHARLES WEIJER
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Ethical Principle ◽  
General Strategy ◽  
Semistructured Interview ◽  
Standard Methods ◽  
Communication Impairment ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Loss Of Autonomy ◽  
Communication Impairments

Abstract:The ethical principle of autonomy requires physicians to respect patient autonomy when present, and to protect the patient who lacks autonomy. Fulfilling this ethical obligation when a patient has a communication impairment presents considerable challenges. Standard methods for evaluating decision-making capacity require a semistructured interview. Some patients with communication impairments are unable to engage in a semistructured interview and are at risk of the wrongful loss of autonomy. In this article, we present a general strategy for assessing decision-making capacity in patients with communication impairments. We derive this strategy by reflecting on a particular case. The strategy involves three steps: (1) determining the reliability of communication, (2) widening the bandwidth of communication, and (3) using compensatory measures of decision-making capacity. We argue that this strategy may be useful for assessing decision-making capacity and preserving autonomy in some patients with communication impairments.

Issues of Capacity and Decision-Making in the Context of Delirium

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 140-145
Author(s):  
Kevin R. Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Care Setting ◽  
Cognitive Change ◽  
Treatment Team ◽  
Precipitating Factors ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Fundamental Consideration

Decision-making capacity is a fundamental consideration in working with patients in a clinical setting. One of the most common conditions affecting decision-making capacity in patients in the inpatient or long-term care setting is a form of acute, transient cognitive change known as delirium. A thorough understanding of delirium — how it can present, its predisposing and precipitating factors, and how it can be managed — will improve a speech-language pathologist's (SLPs) ability to make treatment recommendations, and to advise the treatment team on issues related to communication and patient autonomy.

Advance Care Planning and Surrogate Decision-Making (DRAFT)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Macauley
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Surrogate Decision Maker ◽  
Substituted Judgment ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Advance Care ◽  
Surrogate Decision

Adult patients are presumed to possess decision-making capacity, but when they are unable to make their own decisions—which is especially frequent in the context of serious illness—ideally a surrogate decision-maker will be able to determine what the patient would have wanted (i.e., substituted judgment). Only when this is not possible is it necessary to fall back on what seems to be in the patient’s best interests. To foster patient autonomy, goals and values should be identified and documented in advance, such as in an advance directive, as well as a surrogate decision-maker named. This helps guide the medical team in critical and often uncertain times, given the challenges in accurate prognostication (which are lessening with the advent of evidence-based tools).

The Paradox of Consent for Capacity Assessments

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 751-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Koch
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Clinical Medicine ◽  
Clinical Importance ◽  
Capacity Assessment ◽  
Ethical Obligation ◽  
Practical Solution ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Patient Consent

The use of decision-making capacity assessments (DMCA) in clinical medicine is an underdeveloped yet quickly growing practice. Despite the ethical and clinical importance of these assessments as a means of protecting patient autonomy, clinicians, philosophers, and ethicists have identified a number of practical and theoretical hurdles which remain unresolved. One ethically important yet largely unaddressed issue is whether, and to what extent physicians ought to inform and obtain consent from patients prior to initiating a capacity assessment. In what follows, I address the following question: Must, or should, physicians obtain consent for capacity assessments? I argue that physicians have an ethical obligation to obtain express patient consent for capacity assessments, and in doing so, I challenge the predominant view which requires physicians to merely inform patients without obtaining consent. I then identify an underlying philosophical paradox that complicates the clinician's duty to obtain consent: in short, consent is needed for an assessment of one's ability to consent. Finally, I recommend a practical solution to this paradox of consent for capacity assessments by proposing a model of double consent from both the patient and health care representative.

The Impact of Depression on Health Care Decisions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Saracino ◽  
Melissa Masterson ◽  
Barry Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Health Care Decisions ◽  
Rational Decision Making ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Care Decision

This chapter examines how depression affects health care decisions, with particular emphasis on patient autonomy, capacity, and competence for decision-making. It first considers the ethical boundaries and psycho-legal criteria for assessing decision-making capacity in the context of medical treatment decisions, attending to issues of autonomy and beneficence as well as the debate over whether paternalistic approaches have a place in our health care system. It then discusses the parameters that help define the debate over paternalism, along with the clinical challenges that accompany the assessment and implementation of these alternative approaches to health care decision-making. The chapter also reviews research exploring the impact of depressive symptoms on decision-making capacity and treatment refusal more specifically. It cites the doctrine of informed consent, the goal of which is to promote patient autonomy and rational decision-making. The chapter concludes with recommendations for a comprehensive approach to decision-making capacity assessment and directions for future research.

scholarly journals Using a multidisciplinary approach to reveal decision-making capacity within acute care for an individual with aphasia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 2050313X2110270
Author(s):  
Ruth Maxwell ◽  
Michelle O’Brien ◽  
Deirdre O’Donnell ◽  
Lauren Christophers ◽  
Thilo Kroll
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Multidisciplinary Team ◽  
Team Approach ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Multidisciplinary Team Approach ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Health And Social Care ◽  
Functional Assessments ◽  
Health Nursing ◽  
Communication Approach

Formal assessments of cognition that rely on language may conceal the non-linguistic cognitive function of people with aphasia. This may have detrimental consequences for how people with aphasia are supported to reveal communicative and decision-making competence. This case report demonstrates a multidisciplinary team approach to supporting the health and social care decision-making of people with aphasia. The case is a 67-year-old woman with Wernicke’s type aphasia. As the issue of long-term care arose, the speech and language therapist used a supported communication approach with the patient who expressed her wish to go home. A multidisciplinary team functional assessment of capacity was undertaken which involved functional assessments and observations of everyday tasks by allied health, nursing, catering and medical staff. In this way, the patient’s decision-making capacity was revealed and she was discharged home. A collaborative multidisciplinary team approach using supported communication and functional capacity assessments may be essential for scaffolding the decision-making capacity of people with aphasia.

scholarly journals Decision-making capacity to address climate-induced food insecurity within women-led groups in Southern Mali

2021 ◽  
Vol 164 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexa L. Wood ◽  
Louie Rivers ◽  
Amadou Sidbé ◽  
Arika Ligmann-Zielinska
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Food Insecurity ◽  
Decision Making Capacity

The capacity to designate a surrogate is distinct from decisional capacity: normative and empirical considerations

2021 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-107078
Author(s):  
Mark Navin ◽  
Jason Adam Wasserman ◽  
Devan Stahl ◽  
Tom Tomlinson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Medical Decision Making ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Decisional Capacity ◽  
Risks And Benefits ◽  
Relative Risks ◽  
Decision Making Capacity ◽  
Cognitive Diseases ◽  
Surrogate Selection

The capacity to designate a surrogate (CDS) is not simply another kind of medical decision-making capacity (DMC). A patient with DMC can express a preference, understand information relevant to that choice, appreciate the significance of that information for their clinical condition, and reason about their choice in light of their goals and values. In contrast, a patient can possess the CDS even if they cannot appreciate their condition or reason about the relative risks and benefits of their options. Patients who lack DMC for many or most kinds of medical choices may nonetheless possess the CDS, particularly since the complex means-ends reasoning required by DMC is one of the first capacities to be lost in progressive cognitive diseases (eg, Alzheimer’s disease). That is, patients with significant cognitive decline or mental illness may still understand what a surrogate does, express a preference about a potential surrogate, and be able to provide some kind of justification for that selection. Moreover, there are many legitimate and relevant rationales for surrogate selection that are inconsistent with the reasoning criterion of DMC. Unfortunately, many patients are prevented from designating a surrogate if they are judged to lack DMC. When such patients possess the CDS, this practice is ethically wrong, legally dubious and imposes avoidable burdens on healthcare institutions.

Prudence in Shared Decision-Making: The Missing Link between the “Technically Correct” and the “Morally Good” in Medical Decision-Making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Muleli Kioko ◽  
Pablo Requena Meana
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Shared Decision Making ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Intellectual Ability ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Shared Decision ◽  
Physician Patient Relationship ◽  
Good Healing ◽  
The Right ◽  
Physician Patient

Abstract Shared Decision-Making is a widely accepted model of the physician–patient relationship providing an ethical environment in which physician beneficence and patient autonomy are respected. It acknowledges the moral responsibility of physician and patient by promoting a deliberative collaboration in which their individual expertise—complementary in nature, equal in importance—is emphasized, and personal values and preferences respected. Its goal coincides with Pellegrino and Thomasma’s proximate end of medicine, that is, a technically correct and morally good healing decision for and with a particular patient. We argue that by perfecting the intellectual ability to apprehend the complexity of clinical situations, and through a perfection of the application of the first principles of practical reason, prudence is able to point toward the right and good shared medical decision. A prudent shared medical decision is therefore always in keeping with the kind of person the physician and the patient have chosen to be.

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