Competence to Consent to Treatment

Conclusions and Opinions

The instruments reviewed here obviously cannot define legal competence or incompetence. This is true whether the clinician uses the data from the instruments in the course of making a clinical decision or offers the data in a court where a legal decision about competence or incompetence will be made. The data from some of these instruments certainly provide relevant information for making the competence decision. But additional clinical data as well as the application of moral and legal considerations will be required to make the final judgment concerning whether the patient’s incapacities, and the consequent risks, are sufficient to curtail his or her right to make the treatment decision.