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).