Competency Testing in Medical and Psychiatric Practice: Legal and Psychological Concepts and Dilemmas

Abstract

Health professionals are in an ethical dilemma. The patients should be assumed as competent. Involuntary treatment is a violation of human rights. Therefore incompetent patients should be protected. However, one cannot determine a patient's incompetency without testing him/her, which is a violation of the assumption of competency. Thus, we propose two different types of uses for competency tests. One is to measure the appropriateness of information disclosed,but with a poor test result the information should be repeated. Another is to measure the competency of the patients when making major decisions. A poor test result will be followed by the designation of a proxy so that incompetent patients can be protected.

Citation

Kitamura, T. and Kitamura, F. (2005), "Competency Testing in Medical and Psychiatric Practice: Legal and Psychological Concepts and Dilemmas", Takahashi, T. (Ed.) Taking Life and Death Seriously - Bioethics from Japan (Advances in Bioethics, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 113-138. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3709(05)08805-9