decision-making capacity
Clinical teaching and practical ideas for your next study session.
Medical Education
Delirium and Refusal of Surgery: Who Can Authorize Treatment?
When delirium prevents a patient from weighing a time-critical operation, a capacity finding is not consent. Learn how best-interests reasoning, prior wishes, legal proxies, urgency, and restraint shape the next step in England and Wales.
Study Tips
Psychiatry SAQ Strategy: Separate the Hold From the Safety Plan
When an agitated patient refuses voluntary admission, the hardest part of the SAQ is not naming a form. It is showing how capacity, emergency detention, observation, environmental controls, lethal-means restriction, and reassessment fit together without overclaiming what a hold permits.