Session: Assessing Equitable Practices for Addressing Health Disparities and Inequities
Fitting a Square Peg into a Round Hole: Ethical Concerns Regarding Standardized Cognitive Assessments in Healthcare
Friday, September 20, 2024
3:45 PM – 4:45 PM CT
Location: Midway 7-8 (First Floor)
Abstract: When determining one’s disposition status following an acute care stay in Westernized systems of biomedical care, cognitive assessments are frequently called upon to inform one’s capacity to live independently. Allied health professionals may be involved in administering standardized assessments that do not account for an individual’s lived experience and may be rooted in bias and discrimination. Several standardized assessments may be overly reductionist and yield results that are quick to pathologize, such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the St. Louis University Mental Status Exam. As such, it is argued that there may be unaddressed justice concerns regarding inappropriate utilization of cognitive assessment tools particularly in marginalized and underrepresented populations. Are these assessments truly inclusionary and capable of capturing an individual’s cognitive capabilities? This presentation will present case studies widely used cognitive assessment instruments and assert an interdisciplinary ethical concern over unjust utilization for marginalized populations. Descriptions of these standardized measures, discussion of their limitations and contextual barriers, as well as a charted path for action to maximize allied health beneficence will be offered. Opportunity for allied health practice modification to promote a more just and ethical implementation of standardized cognitive assessment will be discussed, in addition to strategies for engagement within the context of a quickly reductionist biomedical system particularly where cognition and cognitive capacity is concerned.
Learning Objectives:
After participating in this conference, attendees should be able to:
Participants will recognize at least 1-2 ethical implications that occur when administering a standardized assessment.
Participants will describe and understand 2-3 potential limitations and/or barriers associated with standardized assessments.
Participants will evaluate 2-3 contextual factors of clinical care that urge the adoption of a more informal method of collecting data in their own work or research settings.
Jennifer Chan, MS, OTR/L, HEC-C – Sutter Health; Brooke Montgomery, MS, OTR/L – UP Health System Bell
