In America, the legal age to sign off on any medical consent is 18 years of age. Seventeen year olds should be able to compose their own medical decisions, and sign off on their own medical consents. Power should land in their hands, accompanied by the professional advice of a doctor. It is your body, be compelled to fabricate a decision without having to have your parent’s signature.
One reason why seventeen year olds ought to undergo their own medical decisions is at the age of seventeen you are well off to know the positive, and the negative effects of the decisions you generate. At that age, you have had countless diversified decisions that may have impacted your life. You may not have the life experience that adults have, but you have
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Mainly because a doctor’s license not covering seventeen year olds. Moreover, if a doctor executes accepting you, you will more than likely be put on a waiting list. The only doctor that can see you on a regular basis is a family doctor. The stipulation being, they cannot give you specialized care. To overtake the stipulations that come with being a seventeen year old, and needing specialized care, the age to give medical consent should be changed from eighteen to seventeen.
Critics might argue that seventeen year olds are too naive to sign their own medical consents. They believe that they are not “of age” and that eighteen is the perfect age to fabricate decisions on behalf of you officially becoming an adult. When in all actuality at the age of eighteen your brain is still technically not fully developed. Your brain is not fully developed until approximately the age of twenty-five. Critics might also argue that there is “too extreme” of a risk associated with allowing a seventeen year to accomplish such grand decisions. The risks being, they refuse critical medical treatment, or they lie about what is wrong with them, just to obtain prescription medicines. Those risks are risks that are associated even within the older
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There is risk with freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and even freedom of religion. Without risk there would be no lesson learned. Consequently, until you learn a lesson that comes from the associated risk, you cannot grow in prosperity. America needs to allow seventeen year olds to conceive their own decisions, weighing against all the risk that everyone is worried about. The risk that they may lead to the wrong decision. Consequently, everyone has made a wrong decision at least once in their
The minor's parent or legal guardian will provide the written consent required in the presen...
In certain situations it is difficult for a person to decide between a moral and immoral choice. In the field of health there are physicians and patients that may have two different mindsets. One may be a patient that believes a decision is moral, while a physician may think the decision is immoral. How can the physician stick to his beliefs and morals when he must make a choice to go against them or not?
With freedom comes great responsibility. This saying has been heard by generations of kids and has been said by generations of parents. Unfortunately people today don?t seem to be responsible in certain things they do. You see things in media today that make you wonder when you draw the line on things you say and do. William Golding the author of Lord of The Flies conveys this thought in the story of the boys stuck on the island where they have complete freedom to do whatever they want to do. They no longer had adults to tell them what and how to do things. The story just proves that when people are irresponsible and freedom gets abused that very bad things can happen.
For years fiery debates whether the driving age for teens should be sixteen or eighteen captured the nation. Sixteen year-olds have a legitimate argument for keeping the age where it stands, but statistics show that sixteen year olds are not responsible enough to drive, and that more practice is needed before anyone should get a driver’s license. However, from the looks of it, it seems that legislation is going to make the legal driving age eighteen.
How can a child make the decision for the life of another child by themselves? In this paper I will outline the mental, physical, and safety issues of minors (age 18 and under) having an abortion and why it is so important that they need to get parental consent before making this life long decision.
Today, there are so many legal dilemmas dominating trial for the courts to make a sound legal decision on whose right in a complicated situation. Despite the outcome of the case, the disagreement usually has a profound effect on the healthcare organization, and the industry as a whole. Many cases are arguments centered around if the issue is a legal or moral principle. Regardless what the situation maybe, the final decision is left to the courts to differentiate between the legality issues at hand opposed to justifying a case based on moral rules. According to Pozgar (2012), an ethical dilemma arises in situations where a choice must be made between unpleasant alternative. It can occur whenever a choice involves giving up something good and suffering something bad, no matter what course of action is taken (p. 367). In this paper, I will discuss cases that arose in the healthcare industry that have been tried and brought to justice by the United States court system.
On the other hand, adults aged 18 have their own rights to make a decision to whether consume alcohol or not. For example, once children turn 18 years old, they are mature enough to make their own decisions. Cloud states, “After all, in almost every other legal and cultural respect, you’re an adult at 18. You can vote, adopt children, sign up for Iraq or become a commercial pilot at 18. Treating alcohol differently helps turns it into a holy grail of adulthood.” (Cloud). Although, in the United States, 18 years o...
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” This quote from Benjamin Franklin illustrates how an emphasis on safety can drastically reduce the freedoms enjoyed by citizens of the United States, especially the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states that “...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” However, with active shooter situations such as Columbine; the Tucson, Arizona shootings, which nearly killed former Representative Gabrielle Giffords; and recent situations at Newtown, Connecticut; Los Angeles International Airport; and Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in New Jersey, the federal government has questioned this right guaranteed to us as U.S. Citizens. In Congress, it is a back-and-forth battle between the Republicans, who favor less gun control legislation and a literal translation of the Second Amendment, and the Democrats who would like to see more gun control legislation to protect the safety of citizens. However, more gun control legislation would punish law-abiding citizens, be a direct violation of the Second Amendment, and expand the power of the federal government into areas where the Founding Fathers never wanted it.
There are profound effects of ageism that can be harmful to a patient’s overall health. Ageism can cause physicians to consistently treat older patients unequally compared to younger adults. Unequal treatment can be divided into the under-treatment of symptoms and the over-treatment of symptoms. The imbalance in how a physician would treat a geriatric patient is ageist because the older adult is not getting fair treatment in every case. Under-treatment and over-treatment are different; however, they are both equally as harmful to a patients health.
First, most adolescents are not mature enough to make decisions that will change their lives forever. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius state, “Some older adolescents have the cognitive ability and capacity to reason similarly to an adult. However, neuroimaging studies have shown that the brain undergoes major reorganization during adolescence, particularly in the regions of the brain relating to executive functions” (qtd. in Christian Med.). In other words, the majority of teens lack maturity and wisdom to make life changing decisions (Christian Med.). In most situations, teens are desperate, and they make choices without thinking about the long- term consequences of their actions. If abortion is hard, enough in a grown woman imaging how it must be in a teenager with no one by her side to counsel and guide her. Imaging how confusing would be the mind of a fourteen years old girl going through an abortion without having her parents to tell her that everything will be fine. How can a fourteen years old girl handle that much stress?
teenager because of the patient's resistance or the physician's own insecurity about dealing with this age group, then referral is
In the beginning of his article, Jarvis lays out facts that shows his audience the rate of pregnancies, abortions, and cases of STDs in minors. Jarvis uses statistics to support his argument that a higher age of consent would help protect the youth from making poor decisions that lead to unwanted consequences. To prevent these unwanted results from teen sex, Jarvis proposes that the age of consent be raised to match the age of marriage. Jarvis states “Minors are simply too young to consent knowledgeably to sex and its potential pitfalls” (1). Jarvis believes that at young ages minors are not able to easily deny older manipulative adults. He feels that if the age of consent were raised to match the age of marriage then individuals would have smaller chances of having unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and abortions. Just as Watchman mentions in her essay, Jarvis also mentions how those who are 18 years of age or older are legally able to smoke, purchase lottery tickets, and get tattoos. The government has made a link to the age 18 that suggests individuals are mature enough at this age to make important decisions regarding their
My colleague and I received an emergency call to reports of a female on the ground. Once on scene an intoxicated male stated that his wife is under investigation for “passing out episodes”. She was lying supine on the kitchen floor and did not respond to A.V.P.U. I measured and inserted a nasopharyngeal airway which was initially accepted by my patient. She then regained consciousness and stated, “Oh it’s happened again has it?” I removed the airway and asked my colleague to complete base line observations and ECG which were all within the normal range. During history taking my patient stated that she did not wish to travel to hospital. However each time my patient stood up she collapsed and we would have to intervene to protect her safety and dignity, whilst also trying to ascertain what was going on. During the unresponsive episodes we returned the patient to the stretcher where she spontaneously recovered and refused hospital treatment. I completed my patient report form to reflect the patient's decision and highlighted my concerns. The patient’s intoxicated husband then carried his wife back into the house.
Physician-assisted suicide refers to the physician acting indirectly in the death of the patient -- providing the means for death. The ethics of PAS is a continually debated topic. The range of arguments in support and opposition of PAS are vast. Justice, compassion, the moral irrelevance of the difference between killing and letting die, individual liberty are many arguments for PAS. The distinction between killing and letting die, sanctity of life, "do no harm" principle of medicine, and the potential for abuse are some of the arguments in favor of making PAS illegal. However, self-determination, and ultimately respect for autonomy are relied on heavily as principle arguments in the PAS issue.
Shaw, A. B. “In Defence of Ageism.” Journal of medical ethics 20.3 (1994): 188–194. Print.