Chapter 2: Consent - Adults
This is part of the online companion site to the book Medical Treatment: Decisions and the Law - The Mental Capacity Act in Action, edited by Christopher Johnston, written by members of 3 Serjeants' Inn and published by Bloomsbury Professional in 2010.
The site provides (1) updating material as it becomes available and (2) hyperlinks to website addresses given in the hard copy. The material is organised according to the book's chapter headings. Click on the chapter headings on the left-hand side to access the material for other chapters.
Updating material
Updating material will be added here as developments occur.
Hyperlinks
Paragraph 2.2 - Footnote 2:
The Code of Practice can be found at: http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/mca/code-of-practice.htm.
Paragraph 2.8 - Footnote 3:
Court of Protection case no 11649371, 28 May 2009 (available at http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/docs/judgement-re-f-28-may-2009.pdf ) per Her Honour Hazel Marshall QC at para 40: ‘There is a danger, with the current spotlight on the new and more sophisticated approach to mental capacity contained in the Act and the very extensive Code of Practice, that general practitioners will think that that they cannot or should not complete such an assessment for the court because of lack of supposed expertise – as happened in this case. This would be likely to lead to their declining to do so in the very cases which are problematic, because there is doubt whether the borderline has been crossed, between decisions which are the product of impaired powers of reasoning, or are merely eccentric unwise or unreasonable decisions in the opinion of others. It would be unfortunate if a conclusive specialist assessment came to be regarded as necessary before the court would accept jurisdiction at all.’As to the court’s interimjurisdiction under MCA s 48 see CHAPTER 5: Procedure at PARA 5.23: The court’s power to make medical treatment decisions.
Paragraph 2.15 - Footnote 1:
www.adrtnhs.co.uk ; A form of directive published by the ADRT is illustrated in APPENDIX 2.1: Draft Advance Directive; Draft Advance Directives can be found at: http://www.adrtnhs.co.uk/pdf/EoLC_appendix1.pdf and http://www.christie.nhs.uk/patients/booklets/pdf/Living_Wills.pdf.