The book explains how assessments should be conducted and offers detailed, practice-tested interview guidelines to assist medical practitioners in this task. Numerous case studies illustrate real-life applications of the concepts and methods discussed. Grisso and Appelbaum also explore the often difficult process of making judgments about competence and describe what to do when patients' capacities are limited.".

While coordinating the University of Groningen’s Honours College Winterschool/Atelier entitled Children's Rights in Health Care, the need to publish the contributions to this program was generally expressed and confirmed by its participants. The Winterschool/Atelier, successfully organized in recent years, has dealt with many issues concerning the legal position of minor persons – born and unborn – in the context of health care, especially pediatric care. These issues involve matters concerning pediatric treatment, preventive care and predictive medicine, medical research involving children, incompetence and child autonomy, a child’s psychological development, parental responsibility and representation, protective judicial measures, child migration issues, children’s health rights enforcement as well as children’s health interest monitoring and promotion. During the program, leading experts in the fields of law, ethics, medicine, biology, psychology and institutions such as the Dutch Child & Hospital Foundation, the Child Protection Board, Save the Children, and UNICEF shared their views on normative standards, practical experiences, significant developments, challenging ideas, silent dreams and inevitable realities. As a result, the Children's Rights in Health Care program provided opportunities for a profound dialogue between Honours College students and lecturing scholars on a wide range of topics involving children’s health care interests. This volume contains several analyses of health rights issues related to children. The various chapters provide an overview of this captivating area and may be of special interest to lawyers, health care professionals, ethicists, psychologists, judicial institutions, policy makers, interest groups, students and all others who are concerned with the children’s rights perspective on health care.

Free and informed consent is one of the most widespread and morally important practices of modern health care; competence to consent is its cornerstone. In this book, Becky Cox White provides a concise introduction to the key practical, philosophical, and moral issues involved in competence to consent. The goals of informed consent, respect for patient autonomy and provision of beneficent care, cannot be met without a competent patient. Thus determining a patient's competence is the critical first step to informed consent. Determining competence depends on defining it, yet surprisingly, no widely accepted definition of competence exists. White identifies nine capacities that patients must exhibit to be competent. She approaches the problem from the task-oriented nature of decision making and focuses on the problems of defining competence within clinical practice. Her proposed definition is based on understanding competence as occurring in a special rather than a general context; as occurring in degrees rather than at a precise threshold; as independent of consequential appeals; and as incorporating affective as well as cognitive capacities. Combining both an ethical overview and practical guidelines, this book will be of value to health care professionals, bioethicists, and lawyers.

A timely, authoritative discussion of an important clincial topic, this useful book outlines the history, function, nature and requirements of informed consent, focusing on patient autonomy as central to the concept. Primarily a philosophical analysis, the book also covers legal aspects, with chapters on disclosure, comprehension, and competence.

The MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT-T) is the product of an 8-year study of patients' capacities to make treatment decisions. It is a semi-structured interview that assists clinicians in assessing a patient's competence to consent to treatment. The process provides a patient with information about their medical/psychiatric condition, the type of treatment being recommended, its risks and benefits, as well as other possible treatments and their probable consequences. During this process, the MacCAT-T prompts the clinician to ask questions that assess the patient's understanding, appreciation, and reasoning regarding treatment decisions.The MacCAT-T Manual is a large-format, examiner-friendly field manual for conducting actual competency assessments. The MacCAT-T Record Form is well designed for recording, rating, and summarizing patient responses. The training videotape, Administering the MacCAT-T, demonstrates an actual administration of the test with discussion, comments, and annotations by Drs. Grisso and Appelbaum.The book, Assessing Competence to Consent to Treatment, describes the place of competence in the doctrine of informed consent, analyzes the elements of decision making, and shows how assessments of competence to consent to treatment can be conducted within varied general medical and psychiatric treatment settings. Includes numerous case studies.

Free and informed consent is one of the most widespread and morally important practices of modern health care; competence to consent is its cornerstone. In this book, Becky Cox White provides a concise introduction to the key practical, philosophical, and moral issues involved in competence to consent. The goals of informed consent, respect for patient autonomy and provision of beneficent care, cannot be met without a competent patient. Thus determining a patient's competence is the critical first step to informed consent. Determining competence depends on defining it, yet surprisingly, no widely accepted definition of competence exists. White identifies nine capacities that patients must exhibit to be competent. She approaches the problem from the task-oriented nature of decision making and focuses on the problems of defining competence within clinical practice. Her proposed definition is based on understanding competence as occurring in a special rather than a general context; as occurring in degrees rather than at a precise threshold; as independent of consequential appeals; and as incorporating affective as well as cognitive capacities. Combining both an ethical overview and practical guidelines, this book will be of value to health care professionals, bioethicists, and lawyers.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

The MacCAT-CR provides a structured format for capacity assessment that is adaptable to the particulars of any given research project. With the introduction of the MacCAT-CR, researchers enrolling human participants in their studieshave available for the first time a reliable and valid means of assessing their potential subject's capacity to consent to participation. The MacCAT-CR can typically be administered in 15-20 minutes. Beginning with project-specific disclosures to potential participants, the MacCAT-CR measures the four generally accepted components of decision-making competence: understanding, appreciation, reasoning, and the ability to express a choice. Quantification of subjects' responses permits comparisons across subjects and subject groups, and allows the MacCAT-CR to be used for not only for screening individual participants but also for conducting research on the characteristics of subject populations and for assessing the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase subjects' capacities.