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Clinical ethics
Personality disorder and competence to refuse treatment
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- Published on: 15 October 2008
- Published on: 15 October 2008Personality disorder is not grounds to consider a person incompetent to make healthcare decisionsShow More
Winburn and Mullen describe a harrowing clinical encounter with a young woman with a severe personality disorder who risked death refusing a blood transfusion. The authors argue that her incompetence to refuse treatment was “on the basis of her personality disturbance”. Their reasoning is flawed.
If the patient lacked capacity around this decision, it was not because she had a personality disorder; it was becaus...
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None declared.
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