Consent must be provided by an individual who has capacity to do so. In the case of minors, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), the Commonwealth privacy regulator, has expressed a view that minors should be assessed on a case by case basis to determine if they have capacity to provide consent.
However, if such an approach is not practicable or reasonable, individuals aged 15 or over may be presumed to have capacity to consent, unless there is something to suggest otherwise. Best Practice Software consider an appropriate approach is for clinics to seek consent from each minor when the minor turns 16. Prior to that age, Best Practice Software consider practices could seek consent where a minor demonstrates that he or she has capacity to consent (such as where the minor independently seeks medical assistance or treatment).
To assist you in managing consent for older children, the following SQL queries can be run from the Database Search utility to identify patients aged 15 or 16 who may demonstrate the capacity for individual consent.
To run a query, select Utilities > Search from the main menu to open the Database Search screen. Copy and paste one of the text snippets below into the SQL Query textbox and click Run query. The results will show the list of patients aged 15 and 16 years. Click Save query if you want to save the query so that you can run it again any time.
Consented with shared mobile number
This query returns all patients aged 15 and 16 years of age who have consented to Bp Comms and share a mobile number with at least one other patient.
SELECT *
FROM BPS_Patients p
INNER JOIN PATIENTCONSENT ON PATIENTCONSENT.INTERNALID = P.INTERNALID and PATIENTCONSENT.ENROLLEDSMS in (1,2)
WHERE StatusText = 'Active'
AND DOB < DateAdd(Year, -15, GetDate())
AND DOB > DateAdd(Year, -17, GetDate())
and (
select count(*)
from bps_patients p1
INNER JOIN PATIENTCONSENT ON PATIENTCONSENT.INTERNALID = P1.INTERNALID and PATIENTCONSENT.ENROLLEDSMS in (1,2)
where
p1.internalid != p.internalid
and p1.MobilePhone = p.MobilePhone
and p1.statustext = 'active'
) >= 1
ORDER BY surname, firstname
Consented
This query returns all patients aged 15 and 16 years of age who have consented to Bp Comms.
SELECT *
FROM BPS_Patients p
INNER JOIN PATIENTCONSENT ON PATIENTCONSENT.INTERNALID = P.INTERNALID and PATIENTCONSENT.ENROLLEDSMS in (1,2)
WHERE StatusText = 'Active'
AND DOB < DateAdd(Year, -15, GetDate())
AND DOB > DateAdd(Year, -17, GetDate())
ORDER BY surname, firstname
See Searching the database for more information.
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