title: Queensland general practitioners' applications of the "mature minor" principle: the role of patient age and gender.
abstract: Most Australian jurisdictions do not have legislation that stipulates an age by which a minor can make their own medical treatment decisions. Instead, they rely on Gillick v West Norfolk and Wisbech Area Health Authority [1986] AC 112, an English common law decision that recommends individual assessments of "maturity". This study explores how medical practitioners in the State of Queensland understand and apply this legal authority when faced with a young person wishing to make a contentious medical treatment decision. Almost 200 doctors made decisions about a hypothetical patient's competence and confidentiality, and detailed their reasoning in an open-ended format. The data indicate that the vagaries of existing legal criteria allow for a range of philosophical perspectives and idiosyncratic heuristics to play a role in assessment practices, and that particular combinations of patient age and gender made these cognitive shortcuts more likely to occur. A notable proportion of such processes are not consistent with legal guidelines, and this has implications for general practitioners' vulnerability to litigation as well as young patients' treatment trajectories.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Deakin University, Melbourne.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Teoludzka
authors.forename: Terence P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Bartholomew
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D058005:General Practitioners; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D033242:Minors / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*