Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
special needs
In brief
Lawful restraint
mental capacity who actively resists attempts
at the provision of dental treatment.
A Case Scenario 3 is presented here (in
the Box below) for the actively resistant
patient. When presented with such a situation an assessment of the patients competence is a legal and moral requirement. The
dentist cannot simply accept the resistance
at face value. If the patient is thought to be
competent then their resistance should be
considered indicative of their true wishes
not to have treatment and those wishes
should be respected. If, as is likely in this
case the patient is incompetent then the law
195
PRACTICE
special needs
Common Law
The general tenet of this paper is the treatment of patients living within the community seeking routine dental care. For these
196
PRACTICE
special needs
Table 1
28-year-old patient
62-year-old patient
Dentists
out of 24
18
2
22
15
24
6
15
72
4.5
90
64
100
21
59
Dentists
out of 26
16
3
21*
16
23
8
17
66
12
80
66
96
33
71
PRACTICE
special needs
Table 2
Summary
The law in relation to the use of restraint to
enable the provision of care has developed
piecemeal over the past 16 years. The cases
that have established the current principles
of law have tended to be hard cases involving life or death decisions. Nevertheless,
those principles apply to all aspects of heath
care treatments, including dentistry.
Clinical decisions with regard to routine
dental treatment should not be a problem.
The issue of competence and the issue of
reasonable restraint are crucial to the deci198
Name of case
Year reported
T vT and another
[1988]
Glossary of titles:
All ER
Med LR
FLR
BMLR
Vol.
1
Reported in:
Title
Page
All ER
613
Judge
Wood
At page
617
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18