Taking chronic fatigue syndrome seriously.
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Diagnosis, Differential↗
Biomedical subjects
K H Kaplan
Publications and source records attributed to K H Kaplan.
The clinician's role in competency evaluations.
The clinician's role in a competency evaluation is unclear. By reviewing the literature and analyzing the clinical process, the authors studied patient's competency to give consent to medical treatment. The authors make recommendations and have specific guidelines for the clinician doing competency evaluations. The authors emphasize the need to focus on the specific task at hand and the assessment of the patient's judgment and decision-making capacity.
Adult↗
Assessing judgment.
There is currently no satisfactory way to assess judgment and yet the clinician is frequently confronted with this responsibility. The author reviews the judgment and decision-making literature, proposes a model for testing judgment, applies this model to patients in a medical setting, and makes the model operational for empirical study. He emphasizes that to assess judgment one needs to evaluate the process of how the individual deals with uncertainty and then goes on to express a preference. The author develops his model by assessing how the individual appraises the challenge, surveys the alternatives, weighs the alternatives, deliberates about selection, and finally makes a commitment to a preference.
Adult↗
Dementia, mental retardation, and competency to make decisions.
The psychiatric literature on competency indicates that a diagnosable psychiatric condition alone does not imply incompetency to make treatment decisions. Nonetheless, it is frequently assumed that individuals who are either mentally retarded or demented are incompetent to make decisions. The authors, focusing on the clinical assessment of judgment and decision making, describe two cases. In both, the patients' judgments were intact. The authors conclude: (1) Diagnosis is not the critical factor in determining competency. (2) The process of judgment and decision making has to be assessed on a case by case basis. (3) Further research is needed to develop clinical instruments to assess judgment.
Aged↗