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Informed Consent Is the Essence of Capacity Assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Jeffrey P. Spike
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Abstract

Informed consent is the single most important concept for understanding decision-making capacity. There is a steady pull in the clinical world to transform capacity into a technical concept that can be tested objectively, usually by calling for a psychiatric consult. This is a classic example of medicalization. In this article I argue that is a mistake, not just unnecessary but wrong, and explain how to normalize capacity assessment.

Returning the locus of capacity assessment to the attending, the primary care doctor, and even to ethics consultation in today's environment will require a substantial effort to undo a strong but illusory impression of capacity assessment. Hospital attorneys as well as clinical ethicists with a sophisticated understanding of health law can be in the vanguard of this reorientation.

Type
Symposium Articles
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 45 , Issue 1: Under Attack: Reconceptualizing Informed Consent , Spring 2017 , pp. 95 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2017

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References

The most influential work in the field, and most responsible for the confusion of capacity and competence is Grisso, T. and Appelbaum, P. S., Assessing Competence to Consent to Treatment (New York: Oxford Press, 1998). For example, they say on p. 17 “our description of competence is guided by the law…” … followed by the claim disputed in this article that “fortunately the legal perspective is consistent with an ethical analysis of competence as well.” One could eliminate most of the confusion simply by rejecting any use of the phrase “competence to consent” and substituting “capacity to consent.” While this error usually traces to the works of those two authors, the confusion began before that. For example in the very important book R. R. Faden and T. L. Beauchamp, A History and Theory of Informed Consent (New York: Oxford, 1986), there is a sophisticated analysis of the principle of Autonomy in terms of informed consent and authenticity (see pp. 237-8), but alas they too sometimes muddy the waters by referring to “competence” rather than “capacity.” However the overall concern in their book is correct, to avoid raising the bar for when patients have the right to make their own medical decisions, in order to preserve their freedom and control over their own life. For a more detailed discussion of the role of authenticity, and how it can replace reasoning as a condition of consent: J. P. Spike, “Personal Identity Is the Philosophical Penumbra in Which Capacity Must be Assessed,” Ethics, Medicine and Public Health 2, no. 4 (2016): 540-549.Google Scholar
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