u/Sudden_Juju

Sorry for the long post. What cognitive abilities/factors does everyone use to help inform recommendations about driving? This question is mostly focused on when to recommend that a patient stop driving, but a discussion about driving in general works too. Of course there are clear cut cases - no impairments mean that we don't recommend anything about driving and global impairments mean that we recommend they completely stop driving - but what about less clear cut cases.

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For example, someone who has normal* processing speed, impaired EF (possibly only assessed through TMT-B and FAS [if you count that] due to time constraints), impaired verbal learning and memory, normal visual memory, split VS skills (some impaired, some normal), and normal auditory attention/WM. Would the conceptualization change if they receive a major NCD instead of a mild NCD diagnosis, but only have IADL difficulties in something like managing their finances/myriad of medications?

*^(normal = low average or above)

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How would you all decide what abilities/factors to prioritize and integrate in a case like this? We know our tests aren't necessarily predictors of driving ability and aren't even close to a replacement for a formal driving test, but they do assess abilities correlated with driving. Also, you obviously don't want to recommend that someone completely stop driving at the first sign of cognitive decline, since it's such a major life change and loss of independence, but you also don't want to be overly permissive and put the patient and the public in unnecessary danger. In other words, where do you draw the line?

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Also, how do you present the recommendation to stop driving? As psychologists and not MDs, we have no actual power in taking away their keys or license; we just make recommendations. However, we still have a duty to discuss our recommendations during feedback, particularly if it's one like this. Thank you for your input on this if you made it this far!

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**Disclaimer: This case I described is a completely made up case to illustrate my point and is not consultation on a specific case and will not inform my clinical practice for a particular patient.**

I work in health care and write a lot of evaluation reports. By nature of my job, these always include a section for medications and assessments that I administered during my evaluation. I've always chosen to write the lists of both horizontally to save space (or else it'd be like a page for each), but I've never known how to appropriately punctuate it. Do I add a period to the end of each, even though it's literally just the nouns and maybe an "and?" Example (off the top of my head, not a real list):

>Medications:

Alprazolam, atorvastatin, empagliflozin, lisinopril, cetirizine, fluticasone, ibuprofen, and ascorbic acid.

The assessments are listed the same way but with semicolons since they usually include commas in their names. It's APA style if it matters. Thank you!

Why are all the questions about US politics and half of them are just, "How can Republicans still support Trump?" It's a valid question, it's just not a valid question to ask 100 times per week lol. 9 other questions start with, "How could Republicans..." and the other 10 are "How could Democrats..."

Maybe everyone else likes it, so delete this post if you want. It just feels like a haven for bot karma farming rather than an actual sub.