Decision-Making Deference
If there was disagreement between the child and her parents regarding
whether to proceed with lung transplantation, physicians were asked
whether they would try to convince the child and/or the parents to defer
to the other party. There was a difference across the four scenarios
both with regards to deferring to the parent (Cochran Q’s p = 0.03) and
deferring to the child (Cochran Q’s p = 0.0002). There was a
statistically significant increased rate of trying to convince the
parents to defer to the child’s preferences for a mature 16-year-old
versus an immature 11-year-old (80% vs. 30%; McNemar p = 0.0016)
(Figure 2). While no other significant differences were found, there was
a trend towards variation both by maturity and age in terms of attempts
to convince one party to defer to the other (Figures 2 and 3).