Legal liability of pediatricians

LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY OF PEDIATRICIANS In the legal order, the protection of one's physical integrity and the right to life is at the forefront of the exercise of all other rights. The protection of the patient and the doctor within the framework of the rules in terms of medical attention, even for the health and recovery, brings with it the responsibility of the parties. The more legally determinable and protective doctor-patient relationship is, the more purposeful both the doctor and the patient will be. In addition to the conditions of lawfulness of the medical attention, determining under which conditions and how the attention should be applied in terms of children should be the primary subject of the medical and juridical sciences. Unless the rights of the paediatric patient and the responsibility of the doctor are not surrounded by the legal boundaries, jeopardise of the public health will be unavoidable result. In practice, it would not be incorrect to say that the responsibility of paediatricians is more sensitive and important than the doctors specified in other fields of medicine, since there are more medical failure and disputes regarding paediatricians than other specialities and the patient is often a child in need of protection. The ability of paediatricians to perform their duties without any concerns regarding possible judgements and to protect their professional autonomy will determine the health of children and thus the health of the community in the long term. In the face of the necessity to legally protect the personality, life and rights of the person, it is obvious that the child is in need of more care and representation It is worthy to legally discus the position of the pediatric patients and the pediatricians from the points of; (i) the notice which legalize the medical attention within the scope of the child's personal medical data and (ii) the consent of the child on the medical attention within the scope of a right strictly bound to the person. On the other hand, in the medical law, the paternalistic understanding, which accepts the doctor as an authority and acts by putting himself in the shoes of the patient, has been abandoned and an autonomous understanding based on the right to determine one's future has been adopted. In the relationship between the paediatrician and the patient, a tendency is being developed which does not accept only the doctor, but even the guardian to rule over the child in terms of children with the power of discernment.