The European vector of Ukraine encourages our State to search for optimal ways which would allow resolve the challenges faced by society today, including in the domain of medical law.

For a doctor, working with child patients is very challenging and responsible. The psychological contact established between the doctor and the child is as important as the process of medical care.

The purpose of the article is to make a systematic analysis of the provisions of international, European and Ukrainian legislation from the perspective of the right of a child patient to considerate care, with a view to identifying its content and ascertaining whether or not this right should be consolidated at the level of national law, and with proposing the mechanisms for its implementation in the Ukrainian realities.

It is established that the system of modern international and regional (European) law with regard to the rights of child patients successfully combines two fundamental principles – patient orientation and the best interests of the child. Current Ukrainian legislation and its application practice is generally consistent with these principles. The health care domain is the most sensitive one, in which the child should be protected as much as possible with the use of efficient instruments of State and law. The author believes that one of these tools is the development of the patient’s right to considerate care, and this should be reflected in the national legal doctrine and be enshrined in legislation. In the author’s opinion, now this right is ready to be implemented (consolidated at the legislative level) as a separate subjective right of the child patient – the right to considerate care.

The analysis of statutory regulations shows that when requesting for medical care, a person becomes a patient who is granted a certain range of rights. Likewise, children acquire all subjective medical rights when seeking for medical care. The specifics of the legal status of a child as such (minor age, a certain state of physical and mental health, etc.) determine the specifics of the content as well as implementation of these rights (personally or through a legal representative). As a result, the author proves that the right to considerate care is closely related to the patient’s right to information about his/her health status and is a logical extension of the patient’s right to qualified medical care.

A child patient has a certain set of rights, among which the right to considerate care is an independent subjective medical right. At the same time, this right is closely linked to other rights enshrined in international and national legislation, which, when implemented, acquire specific features stemming from the fact that their holder is the child.

At the international level, the WMA Declaration of Ottawa on Child Health enshrines the child’s right to be treated with consideration and links it to the right requiring that the child’s status and privacy be understood and respected. Every effort should be made to prevent or, if possible, minimize the child’s pain and suffering, and also to alleviate the child’s physical and emotional stress. It is also necessary to provide terminally ill children with needed care to make the imminent death painless and dignified, as far as possible.

The major conclusion of the study is the author’s definition of the right of a child patient to considerate care as the subjective right of a child to a respectful, friendly, attentive, and individual attitude on the part of the attending doctor and other medical professionals, with the latter taking account of the peculiarities of each individual child’s psychology. This definition should be consolidated at the level of the laws of Ukraine “On Childhood Protection” and “Fundamentals of the Legislation of Ukraine on Health Care”.

Bibliography

Authored books

1. Hotovickij S, Pedijatrika [Pediatrics] (tip Je Praca 1847) (in Russian).

Edited books

2. Biojetika: uchebnik i praktikum dlja vuzov [Bioethics: Textbook and Tutorial for Universities] (Protanskaja E red, Izdatel’stvo Jurajt 2016) (in Russian).

Journal articles

3. Pikuza O i Zakirova A i Shoshina N, ‘Aktual’nye voprosy medicinskoj deontologii v podgotovke vracha-pediatra’ [‘Topical Issues of Medical Deontology in the Training of a Pediatrician’] [2014] 95(3) Kazanskij medicinskij zhurnal (in Russian).