Consent for Treatment of Minors & Others Form

Instructions and help about Consent For Treatment Of Minors & Others

- I'm going to to talk to you today about the law around children and their autonomy in relation to medical care, particularly very unwell children who refuse treatment. So let me start with an example. So imagine you're a judge on call and a hospital comes to you with a terrible dilemma. They're treating a very ill child. He's only 15 years old, 15 years 10 months to be precise. He has leukemia and he needs medications to hopefully help him get better. Now, if he has the conventional treatment, there's an 80 to 90% chance he will go into full remission, he'll be fine. And there's an alternative treatment that'll only give them a 60% chance of remission, but there's a problem. Taking some of the conventional medicines will mean he will need a transfusion of blood and he and his family have made it clear that he doesn't want to transfusion because it's against his faith as a Jehovah's Witness. The hospital have been respecting this, they've been giving him alternative treatment instead,