Physician--adolescent patient relationship. The ethical dimension.

Adolescents are very different from each other, but they all have a developmental process in common: they are going through their second period of individuation and they are developing value systems. Doctors get in touch with their adolescent patients on many different levels and with varying degrees of intensity, but they too have something in common: an obligation to their patient. Although the nature of this obligation is open to debate, the fact is that any interpersonal experience contains a moral element virtually by definition: there is an ethical dimension to the physician-adolescent patient relationship. The nature of the doctor's obligation to the adolescent is defined as aiding the patient to achieve growth. The physician can do this through appropriate use of value clarification and often through personal example.