Evaluation of the legal and ethical knowledge of physicians in relation to the adolescent

Introduction: adequate healthcare of the adolescent minor requires the physician to be familiar with the mature minor doctrine and to be sensitive to patients? rights. The 41/2002 Act regulating patient autonomy (LBAP) defends the patient?s right to information, consent and confidentiality. Conscious of the lack of a standard approach to medical scenarios in which the evaluation of a minor?s capacity is required, we decided to design this study in order to find out physicians? opinion of this issue.

Materials and methods: multicentric study using an anonymous survey of 400 Primary Care and Hospital-based Specialist physicians. It comprises 13 closed questions aimed at assessing knowledge, approaches and attitudes when treating adolescents of 12-18 years of age.

Results: physicians? knowledge of Act 41/2002 (LBAP) are very limited: 25% of those surveyed know the legal age of majority for health issues while 34% know that the patient?s doctor is the person ultimately responsible for assessing patient maturity. Eight point five percent have detailed knowledge of the mature minor doctrine. Only 23.6% require the minor to sign informed consent. Seventy-three percent state that they find no difficulty in thinking of minors as being potentially mature and the same number are able to carry out a rational discussion with minors in the event of a conflict of interests.

Conclusions: it is necessary to extend physicians? knowledge of the legal and ethical issues involved in healthcare and it would be advisable to make the teaching of Bioethics more widespread.