"But I'm an Adult Now … Sort of" Adolescent Consent in Health Care Decision-Making and the Adolescent Brain
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Imagine that you are a fourteen-year-old boy who has gone on a camping trip with a group of friends.Your parents have thoughtfully provided the adults supervising the trip with a medical release form authorizing them to consent to any required emergency medical care.After leaving you with these responsible adults, they head off on their own backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.To your surprise, when you arrive at the camp you discover that the camp authorities will not allow you in without proof of a tetanus vaccine.As far as you can remember, the last time you got shots it was before you started kindergarten.Fortunately, the camp is near a clinic that can administer a tetanus shot.You are relieved that your week of camping will not be lost.But when you arrive at the clinic, the health provider tells you that she cannot administer a tetanus injection without proper consent.You are stuck.The medical release your parents signed was for emergency care.This does not even resemble emergency care.Your camping trip is ruined.Now you will have to spend the next two weeks until your parents return with your Aunt Gertrude, who can't tell an X-box from a xylophone.Should this adolescent be allowed to consent to a vaccination?This may seem a trivial question.What difficulty could the ability to consent to a simple and risk free procedure such as a tetanus booster pose?The question often becomes much more serious when we consider cases such as the fifteen-year-old who wants to refuse further life-saving care after his second liver transplantation fails.Adolescents are in a curious in-between stage of life.They are neither children nor adults.They are capable of much adult-like thought, yet they have not generally acquired all the tools necessary to live independently.They want to be treated like adults, except when they don't want to be.This is a seeming paradox, but it follows what is becoming an increasingly better understood developmental
Author: Paul Arshagouni
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W429817504