Adolescent Privacy Information

Your privacy is extremely important to us. We guard it preciously. In order to help you the best we can, we understand that your privacy and keeping your issues private is extremely important. Trust is a key feature of our practice.  This is our promise to you.

It is important for you to know that all information shared by you with your doctor is private and confidential. It will not be shared with your parents or anybody else without your permission. Our priority is to keep you healthy, safe and meet your health care needs the best we can.

While ‘we fully encourage’ the support of a patient’s parent(s) or primary care giver to support you, we understand that sometimes this is not possible or not in the best interest of our patients. Likewise you should feel free to bring your parent(s), guardian or support person along to your appointment.

If you bring somebody along, don’t be surprised if we ask them to step out for a few minutes so that we can ask you questions that you may not want to answer in front of anybody else. We know that it would be difficult for you to ask for them to step out of the room so we do it for you. Of course, if you are more than happy for them to hear everything, then just let your doctor know.

You can make decisions about your health. In terms of you making decisions about your care, we rely on a principle called ‘Gillick Competency’.  This competency, accepted under Australian Law, enables doctors to assess their teenage patients with regards to teens making health decisions for themselves. A very easy to understand explanation of Gillick Competency can be read on the internet at:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillick_competence

Under Queensland Law: The only reasons we would ever disclose a patient’s private information is when it is decided by the doctor that their patient is at risk of or being physically, sexually or emotionally abused or harmed in some way.  This is a rare occurrence.  Likewise, if we feel that our patient is indicating clear intent of harming somebody else, we would need to take action to protect that other person.