Agreement between professions on ethical decisions: an empirical demonstration

The decisions of a multidisciplinary competency panel at the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, Canada, were studied to try to explain the high level of agreement on individual cases when determining mental capacity. The panel assessed its own judgments on a standardized form developed to capture the process of coming to a capacity determination. Though the relative weights given to decision-making variables varied with discipline, there was agreement on a group of criteria most relevant to capacity. Three alternative explanations are given for these results.