title: Assessing capacity.
abstract: Health care professionals often encounter patients who refuse a recommended treatment plan. Overriding a patient's right to autonomy has ethical, legal, and moral consequences. Incapacity is the determination by a physician that a patient lacks the ability to make informed decisions about his or her health care. The fundamentals needed for evaluating and documenting patients' capacity to make decisions regarding their personal medical care are provided.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: S S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: D B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Marin
mesh_terms: D016223:Advance Directives; D003657:Decision Making; D004630:Emergencies; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent; D008499:Medical Records / Q000592:standards; D016743:Mental Competency; D014481:United States