Capacity Assessment

Prescribers (physicians, psychologists, nurse practitioners and others) may be called upon to assess a patient's capacity to participate in one or more types of decision-making. There are different capacities. One standard can apply to decisions about whether to accept a potentially uncomfortable procedure. A different capacity threshold may relate to decisions about financial matters, and yet another to decisions about where to live and with whom.

Connect Care provides prescribers with tools to facilitate the assessment and documentation of patients' decision-making capacity; these are outlined here. However, there remain some Alberta Government forms that must dealt with outside of Connect Care and then scanned or attached to the "Media" tab within a patient's chart.

Resources

• • Guideline: Cognitive Impairment (Toward Optimized Practice, Alberta)

  • Questions: ConnectCare.Consent@ahs.ca

External Guides and Forms

Mental Health Act (compelled treatment)

• AHS: Mental Health Act Forms

  • Includes Form 1 and Form 2 (regarding admissions) and Form 19 (regarding community treatment orders)

  • Forms can be completed online, "printed" to PDF and then attached to the "Chart Review" activity using Media Manager.

Dependency

• GoA: Guide to Capacity Assessment for Guardianship and Trusteeship

• GoA: Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee forms for professionals

• GoA: Form 3 - Capacity Assessment Report (Co-decision-making)

• GoA: Form 4 - Capacity Assessment Report (Guardianship or Trusteeship)

Power of Attorney

• GoA: Enduring power of attorney

Personal Directives

• GoA: Understanding Personal Directives

• GoA: Personal Directive Form

• GoA: Guide to capacity assessment under the Personal Directives Act

• Schedule 2: Declaration of Incapacity to Make Decisions about a Personal Matter

  • Schedule 3: Declaration of Incapacity to Make Decisions about a Personal Matter