Consent to treatment is only valid when the patient has the capacity to consent (Meisel & Cerminara, 2001). Competence is not the same as capacity, yet they are fre-quently considered to be synonymous. Competency to make healthcare decisions is a legal term that is deter-mined only by a court. The law presumes that all adults are competent and have the ability to make their own de-cisions including thosenbout healthcare, and the assump-tion is ordinarily correct (Meisel & Cerminara, 2001). To be considered competent, an individual must be able to comprehend the nature of the action in question and un-derstand its significance. However, a patient need not be adjudicated incompetent to lack the capacity to consent to medical treatment (Meisel & Cerminara, 2001).