is permission required?

[GingerSue]

Is the permission of the individual required before a physician or a nurse

wants to do a "Comprehensive Older Person's Evaluation" or a

"MiniMental State Examination" or a "Depression Evaluation"?

Usually I will go ahead and ask about orientation to time, place, and person, but some of these evaluations include some very personal questions.

Is the health staff supposed to at least inform the person that these are being done?

[JBudd, MSN]

No, they are just tools for assessing your patient. You can't auscultate the brain the way you do the lungs, so you ask questions. If the patient doesn't want to answer the questions, they don't have to, any more than they have to let you listen to lungs. But it is just assessing your patient's status.

Good question!

[GingerSue]

No, they are just tools for assessing your patient. You can't auscultate the brain the way you do the lungs, so you ask questions. If the patient doesn't want to answer the questions, they don't have to, any more than they have to let you listen to lungs. But it is just assessing your patient's status.

Good question!

it may be just assessing, but what about informing the patient first,

to explain that an assessment is taking place

doesn't the patient have a right to know that a series of questions are going to be asked for an evaluation?

(I'm thinking too of someone from the past, a young man whose parents wanted him to go to a psychiatrist. When I phoned the psychiatrist to ask if he could be seen, she said "only if the young man chooses to come see her" - it's a similar kind of situation - knowing that an assessment is being done - and the client being informed.

Also, there was mention in one of my current books about various questions that are intrusive - who decides which questions are intrusive?)

[CHATSDALE]

when you are alone with a patient explain that you are goig to ask some questions and that he can decline to answer any or all of them

ask in a forthright adult way, [this may be me, i am short and sometimes someone will come and talk in a sing-song way,really irks me]

anyway you can observe by the reaction to questions and even in the mannr of refusal..chart everything, if you ae porfessional in the manner that you aproach a subject they will usually respond in kind

[big-chicken]

I'm not a nurse, but would like to add a comment.

If any notation is going to be made to the patient's medical record, they certainly should be asked to consent to an evaluation.

big-chicken

[ZippyGBR, BSN, RN]

I'm not a nurse, but would like to add a comment.

If any notation is going to be made to the patient's medical record, they certainly should be asked to consent to an evaluation.

big-chicken

Nurses and other health professionals are expected to conduct full and comprehensive assessments , patients can refuse these assessments , however a refusal of an assessment can in some cases be just as telling as a 'failed' assessment

screening tools such as MMSE and the other tools mentioned are screening tools and should be considered as screening tools in the same way as we ask people who are admitted to have observatiosn recorded, baseline bloods, ward urine test and to be 'clerked' in terms of history taking and physical examination...

the fact people are making a big deal of these particular issues is down to the irrational fear that people who don't really understand particularly well what mental health services are about have in relation to involving mental health services...

it is arguably negligent not to assess someone who presents with a confusional state via tools such as AMTS and MMSE- our elederly medicine physicians make extensive use of these tools in their assessment of their patient group

to a point MMSE and AMTS are just another observation - and far more telling opf what is going on with someone in a confusional state than misusing the GCS...