Kanser tanısı alan çocuk/ergenlerin onay sürecine ve tedaviye katılımlarının değerlendirilmesi

In cases of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, physicians’ tendency to reveal the medical truth to the patients can vary depending on each country’s own moral, social and cultural structures as well as countries’ health policies and traditional physician attitudes. Furthermore, the way of informing patients about cancer diagnosis can vary depending on the patient’s characteristics and psychological adaptation methods. The situation is more complicated to when the patients are from children or adolescent age group. Children and adolescents are left out of assent process because of physicians’ and parents’ concerns about cancer and death, their wish to protect the child from these worries and their belief that children are not psychologically powerful enough to deal with this situation. However children and adolescents must be involved in the treatment decision process because it is important to build the physician-patient relationship on mutual trust in order to assure compliance in cancer treatment and cooperation that is required for the treatment. In this article, first of, all the importance of getting approval of children for the treatment will be emphasized. Afterwards attitudes of physicians and parents, who take part in the process as decision makers in telling the truth, will be examined. Following a brief review of approaches regarding our country; the importance of communication in the cancer process and our recommendations will be expressed.