Consistency of physician judgments of capacity to consent in mild Alzheimer's disease.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the agreement of physician judgments of capacity to consent to treatment for normal and demented older adults.


METHODS
Subjects were individually administered a standardized consent capacity interview. Physicians viewed videotapes of these interviews and made judgments of capacity to consent to treatment.


METHODS
University medical center.


METHODS
Subjects assessed for competency (N = 45) were 16 normal older controls and 29 patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Five medical center physicians with experience assessing the competency of dementia patients were recruited from the specialties of geriatric psychiatry, geriatric medicine, and neurology.


METHODS
Subjects were videotaped responding to a standardized consent capacity interview (SCCI) designed to evaluate capacity to consent to treatment. Study physicians blinded to subject diagnosis individually viewed each SCCI videotape and made a judgment of competent or incompetent to consent. Agreement of physician judgments was evaluated using percentage agreement, kappa, and logistic regression.


RESULTS
Competency judgements of physicians showed high agreement for controls but low agreement for AD patients. Physicians as a group achieved 98% judgment agreement for the controls but only 56% judgment agreement for the mild AD patients. The physician group kappa for controls was 1.00 (P < .0001) and differed significantly (P < .0001) from the physician group kappa of .14 (P = .44) for AD patients, indicative of a real difference in the ability of the study physicians to judge consistently competency across the two groups. Similarly, logistic regression analysis showed significant variability in physician judgements for the AD group (chi 2 = 63.8, P < .0001) but not for the control group (chi 2 = 4.1, P = 1.00). Within the Ad group, pairwise analyses revealed significant judgment disagreement (P < .01) for seven of the 10 physician pairs.
Marson
D C
DC
Department of Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham 35294, USA.
McInturff
B
B
Hawkins
L
L
Bartolucci
A
A
Harrell
L E
LE
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D032921:Consensus; D035061:Control Groups; D003657:Decision Making; D005852:Geriatric Psychiatry; D005853:Geriatrics; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D007600:Judgment; D016015:Logistic Models; D016743:Mental Competency; D009462:Neurology; D015588:Observer Variation; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*