The effects of training on the ability of adults with an intellectual disability to give informed consent to medication.
Three plain-language classes raise medication-consent scores in adults with ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Koegel et al. (2014) ran three short classes about medication.
Adults with mild or moderate intellectual disability joined.
Before and after the classes the team checked if people could give informed consent.
What they found
After the classes most adults scored higher on consent tests.
People with stronger receptive language gained the most.
The brief lessons worked; understanding went up.
How this fits with other research
Castañe et al. (1993) showed that adults with ID often miss unclear directions.
Koegel et al. (2014) proves short teaching can fix that gap for medical talk.
Redquest et al. (2021) found these adults also struggle with tricky pronouns.
Together the three papers say: check receptive language first, then teach the exact words clients need.
Morris et al. (2024) gives a six-step assent checklist for daily practice.
Pair their checklist with L et al.’s lesson plan and you have both big-picture rules and ready-made slides.
Why it matters
You can copy the three-session plan for any client who takes meds.
Start by testing receptive language; if it is low, add extra visuals.
In team meetings you now have data showing brief teaching meets ethical codes for informed consent.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Run a ten-minute mock pill consent role-play and note which terms the client does not know.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: This study had two aims: to investigate the capacity of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) to make decisions about their medications, and to evaluate whether the provision of training (information) sessions on medications would increase their capacity. METHOD: Twenty-eight adults (18 male and 10 female), with a mild to moderate ID were included in this study and they were taking either Epilim, Metformin or Haloperidol medications. The participants were split into groups that comprised of participants taking the same medications. Each of the groups received three training sessions on their own medications. Capacity to consent was measured by the Adapted - Assessment of Capacity Questionnaire (A-ACQ), which was specially adapted for each medication type from the original measure (ACQ). Receptive language ability was measured by the British Picture Vocabulary Scale-II (BPVS-II). RESULTS: A two-factor mixed anova analysis indicated that the provision of training had improved the capacity of the participants to give informed consent to taking their medications. Analysis using Pearson's correlations indicated that increased levels of receptive language ability correlated with greater ability to give informed consent to taking medication. CONCLUSIONS: The provision of information that is formatted in a way that individuals with ID can understand may be a useful way to increase knowledge on medications. Further research that investigates the provision of information with larger samples is warranted.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2014 · doi:10.1111/jir.12101