As our young patients grow older, they take more responsibility for themselves and for their own health care. We want our adolescent patients and their parents to know that our primary concern and responsibility is for their well being and for their needs. We encourage our adolescent and young adult patients to speak with us directly, and to feel free to discuss with us any concerns that they may have about their health and about their bodies.
On some occasions, there will be issues that our patients discuss with us that will be confidential in nature. We encourage discussion of these issues, because we feel that our patients deserve the right to have a physician who can listen to these issues and respond to them. It is our policy when dealing with adolescent and young adult patients to keep confidential any issues that our patients request us to, with the sole exception of issues that might be serious enough to be life-threatening.