The Age of Medical Consent Debate

There’s been some debate about the age of medical consent.

The legislation is clear … 16 is the magic number that a child can start making their own decisions… under 16 it falls to their parents or a health practitioner can make a judgement call and decide if the child is capable of making the choice or not. This magic number is also backed up by the principles of the Hague Convention Treaty, of which Canada is a member of.

At 16 a child can request you not be in the room with the doctor and the doctor can enforce that privacy (although under 16 it’s at the doctors discretion … they may have you leave the room so they can talk to the child at the child’s request but would bring you up to date afterwards).

Even in the area if there was a potential sexual assault on your 16 year old; a DASA nurse would be made available to the 16 year old at the hospital for example, but parents would be excluded from the conversation, and not be informed on the content of those conversations after the fact (unless the child wanted that disclosure).

I have seen where even though a 16 year old patient is in Emergency, and they needed to do things like blood draws for resolution cat scans and that sort of thing, staff defer to the parent, ignoring to some extend the 16 year old's preferences. So this is all subject to the "boots on the ground." Sometimes they conform to the letter of the law, sometimes they deviate. If you were told otherwise … well … check with your doctor.… but the legislation is pretty clear on this point.