Ethics Untangled
Ethics Untangled is a series of conversations about the ethical issues that affect all of us, with academics who have spent some time thinking about them. It is brought to you by the IDEA Centre, a specialist unit for teaching, research, training and consultancy in Applied Ethics at the University of Leeds.
Find out more about IDEA, including our Masters programmes in Healthcare Ethics and Applied and Professional Ethics, our PhDs and our consultancy services, here:
ahc.leeds.ac.uk/ethics
Ethics Untangled is edited by Mark Smith at Leeds Media Services.
Music is by Kate Wood.
Ethics Untangled
58. Do we need to rethink competence to consent? With Danielle Bromwich
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In medical ethics, competence (sometimes called decision-making capacity) refers to a person’s ability to make informed choices about their own healthcare. It is a central concept because respect for patient autonomy depends on the patient being able to understand, evaluate, and communicate decisions about treatment. Danielle Bromwich is a medical ethicist at the University of Leeds. In a paper co-written with Joseph Millum from the University of St Andrews, she argues that the way medical ethics has treated competence has been mistaken, that ethicists have been conflating two distinct concepts, and that this confusion has the potential to lead to bad decisions being made about patient care. We also explore the implications her account has for other domains in which we give and refuse consent, such as sexual relations.
The paper we discuss in this episode is available here.
Danielle and Joseph have also written a book about consent, which is available here. There will be a further episode of Ethics Untangled featuring Danielle soon in which we talk about the book and the ethics of consent more broadly.
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
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