Consent by children: considerations when assessing maturity and mental capacity

Pharmacokinetics of cocaine: considerations when assessing cocaine use by urinalysis.

Changes in a patient’s patterns of cocaine use are generally considered an important outcome measure of treatment efficacy. Other treatment outcome measures are important as well, but if a treatment does not stop or significantly decrease the intensity of a cocaine addict’s cocaine use, many would question the treatment’s efficacy. Examination of a patient’s urine for evidence of cocaine or coc...

Ethical Informed Consent Considerations for Research in Severe Mental Illness

Study Objective: The objective of this integrative review is to update researchers on the clinical and ethical considerations that are shaping the current understanding of informed consent for research participants with a severe mental illness (SMI). METHOD: A literature search was performed within the last 5 years in the following databases: Legal Collection, MasterFile Premier, MEDLINE, and P...

Capacity and consent in England and Wales: the Mental Capacity Act under scrutiny.

Statistical considerations when assessing outcomes following treatment for prostate cancer.

PURPOSE We explore the impact of study designs, biases, outcome variables and statistical techniques when interpreting studies concerning prostate cancer management. MATERIALS AND METHODS Examples from the current literature and a recently assembled population based sample of patients 55 to 75 years old at diagnosis identified by the Connecticut Tumor Registry as having newly diagnosed locali...

Coercion and capacity to consent

What does the capacity to consent to treatment entail and what factors influence it? To date, most research has focussed on individual factors that impair capacity to consent to treatment, such as intelligence, cognitive capacity and symptoms of mental illness. In this presentation, I want to explore the social and interpersonal factors that influence capacity to consent. I discuss the complexi...