Sections
Clinical Legal Issues: Introduction | Mandated Reporting, Tarasoff, and
Shaken Baby Syndrome | Assessment of Risk of Violence in the Person With
TBI | Assessment of Competencies in the Patient With TBI | Admissibility of Clinician Testimony Related to Brain
Injury | Malingering and Inaccurate Reporting of Symptoms | TBI in the Criminal Justice System | TBI in the Civil and Administrative Justice Systems | Fitness for Duty and Return to Competition Following
TBI | Key Clinical Points | Recommended Readings | References
Excerpt
Patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI),
especially those with personality change or who manifest difficulties
in consciousness, judgment, mood regulation, memory, orientation,
insight, and impulse control, can raise complex legal and ethical
problems (Warriner and Velikonjad 2006). TBI creates
situations requiring the patient, and thus the clinician, to interface
with multiple systems. People with TBI frequently are involved in
criminal, civil, or administrative legal situations. They may be
involved as disability claimants, witnesses, victims, plaintiffs,
criminal defendants, respondents, or petitioners, in a wide variety
of circumstances. TBI has become associated with the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq, challenging systems of health care delivery, rehabilitation,
and compensation. Readers of this chapter may find themselves working
with people with TBI as treatment providers or as expert witnesses
commenting on various types of competencies, petitioning for guardianship
or conservatorship, supporting accommodations and services under
the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (1997)
or the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990), testifying
on the effects of the TBI on the person's life or predictions
of future behaviors, or providing estimations of whether the injury's
effects are being overstated, among many possible roles. TBIs, when
initially seen, may require a report to authorities under a mandated
reporter statute. Injuries that result in a persistent vegetative
state may require ethical consultation if further care is felt to
be futile and the substitute decision maker is requesting termination
of further lifesaving or maintenance interventions. The basic legal
and ethical concepts discussed in this chapter are applicable to
other forms of brain injury or disorders.