By MELISSA KANG
If your teenage daughter was sexually active and wanted to go on the pill, you’d want to know, right? Well, think back to when you were her age – would you have told your parents?
These questions were the subject of a recent Melbourne study of parental views of adolescent’s right to confidential health care.
The study, which took place in a specialist Adolescent Medicine clinic, found the majority of parents surveyed (86%) believed they should be informed by their adolescent’s treating health professional about their health problems and behaviours, regardless of whether their child agreed.
For clinicians, confidential care underpins best practice in adolescent health. But so does working with parents and families to support young people who have health problems.
These seemingly opposite approaches raise a number of ethical, legal and health-care issues for health professionals who treat young people.
Legal framework
In Australia, confidential health care is a human right enshrined in law. And medical practitioners can be sued for breaching patient confidentiality.
There are many exceptions to this, such as a patient giving permission for their information to be shared – with partners, parents or family members – or when a person is deemed at serious risk of harm to themselves or others.