Capacity & consent

Question 1

What is capacity?

Answer 1

An individual’s ability to make decisions or take actions that influence their life from what to have for breakfast, to far-reaching decisions about serious medical treatment.

Question 2

Assessing capacity

• who can do it?
• applies to what decisions? (2)

Answer 2

-any registered
interred medical practitioner

-decision specific and not disease specific, i.e. not all people with mental disorder lack capacity

Question 3

What is the BMAs guidance on capacity to consent to treatment?

Answer 3

Understand in simple language what the treatment is, its purpose and nature and why it is being proposed
Understand its principle benefits, risks and alternatives
Understand in broad terms what will be the consequences of not receiving the proposed treatment
Retain the information long enough to use it and weigh it in the balance in order to arrive at a decision

BURPCCC
Believe
Understand
Retain
Process
Communicate
Consistently
Coercion

Question 4

What legislation can be used in the event someone is deemed not to have capacity?
-what does incapable of making a decision actually mean?

Answer 4

-Adults with incapacity act

-incapable of:
Making decisions
Understanding decisions/ info presented
Communicating decisions
Acting on decisions, most difficult in cognitive disorders, if someone doesn’t carry things through then you can start to question their capacity
Retaining the memory of decisions
As a result of mental disorder or inability to communicate due to physical disability or neurological impairment