Informed Consent In Pediatric Practice: Legal And Ethical Issues

In the medical practice, health professionals are legally obliged to obtain the informed consent from their patients before performing any invasive medical procedure. In the case of minors, society and law presume that children are not able to make major life decisions on their own, and the rules that exist to deny children the right to make decisions independently, generally serve to protect them (Koocher & Keith-Spiegel, 1990). Parents have legal authority to make all decisions on behalf of their children, including medical decisions. Parents are always two, as a rule. It means that not only one parent, but both of them need to agree to medical invasive treatments of their children. This paper will present the particularity of the informed consent in pediatrics according to the regulations on the New Civil Code (NCC) adopted in 2009. Also authors will examine in which way and why these regulations should be translated in the clinical pediatric practice. As a conclusion, pediatric clinicians should implement in their day-by-day practice these legal exigencies. We mean the medical full information and the informed consent to medical treatments need to be obtained from both parents, because parents assume both of them the responsibility for the life and health of the child.