Published 22 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a901
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a901

Letters

Mental capacity

Trustwide audit on mental capacity

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

With regard to mental capacity and psychiatric admission,^{1 2} we carried out a trustwide audit into mental capacity assessment and documentation in North East London Mental Health Trust in September-November 2007, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 having been implemented in April 2007. The standard used for the audit was that the mental capacity assessment should be carried out thoroughly on the basis of all the domains mentioned in the act and be recorded in the patient’s notes.

The audit looked at 50 patients across the trust, distributed equally between men and women and across all client groups, including some in the community. It also covered all age groups, but with a slight preponderance of people over 65. We targeted patients in whom capacity was thought to be an issue and was either lacking or borderline.

In 37 out of 50 cases where capacity was an issue, there was no documented assessment . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ North East London Mental Health NHS Trust, London E11 1NR

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Articles

Mental capacity and psychiatric admission

John Dawson
BMJ 2008 337: a116. [Extract] [Full Text]

Mental capacity to make decisions on treatment in people admitted to psychiatric hospitals: cross sectional study

Gareth S Owen, Genevra Richardson, Anthony S David, George Szmukler, Peter Hayward, and Matthew Hotopf
BMJ 2008 337: a448. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Online poll

Find out more >>