Incompetence in practice in health care in the Netherlands: report of a study

Recent health legislation in the Netherlands makes specific provisions for patients who are not (fully) capable of acting reasonably in their own interests. If this legislation is actually to improve the legal position of incompetent people, it must be clear to whom these provisions apply. The description in modern legislation is that the person ‘is regarded as not being able to make a reasonable assessment of his interests in the issue in question’. The law does not provide criteria according to which competence can be assessed in practice. In the present study, data on the competence assessm... Mehr ...