Ethical issues and procedural dilemmas in measuring patient competence

Patients can be judged incompetent when they begin to refuse treatments and nursing interventions believed to be important for their health, but finding agreement among health care providers on the concept of competency is sometimes an arduous task. This article reviews competency measurement models from the disciplines of law, medicine, and philosophy and compares the usefulness of these tests and criteria. Conclusions are stated about the use of these models in nursing to evaluate the patient's autonomous state.