SERVICES OF UNDERTAKING THE CHILD'S MAJOR MEDICAL TREATMENTS FROM THE ASPECT OF PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

Parental consent on undertaking the child's major medical treatments constitutes the issues that significantly affect the life of the child. In that sense, undergoing such medical treatments demands explicit and written consent of both parents, encompassing even the cases of sole exercise of parental responsibility in domestic legislation. Firstly, the author tries to define the concept of major medical treatments taking into account rules of the Law on the Rights of Patients. It has been found that this concept involves exceptional diagnostic and therapeutic invasive medical measures that may have significant effect on the child' right to life, survival and development. Furthermore, special attention is paid to the child's autonomy enforcement in the context of parental consent to the child's major medical treatments. It has been shown that applying the principle of the best interests of the patient in the domain of medical service provision requires bigger involvement of paternalistic elements reducing even the autonomy of the competent child. Finally, this paper suggests legal mechanisms that can be used for overcoming the problems of parental disagreement on undertaking child's major medical treatments. These mechanisms differ in their compliance to the concept of urgent medical measures.Publishe