2967 - Decision-making on behalf of a minor patient.
§ 2967. Decision-making on behalf of a minor patient. 1. An attending physician, in consultation with a minor's parent or legal guardian, shall determine whether a minor has the capacity to make a decision regarding resuscitation. 2. (a) The consent of a minor's parent or legal guardian and the consent of the minor, if the minor has capacity, must be obtained prior to issuing an order not to resuscitate the minor. (b) Where the attending physician has reason to believe that there is another parent or a non-custodial parent who has not been informed of a decision to issue an order not to resuscitate the minor, the attending physician, or someone acting on behalf of the attending physician, shall make reasonable efforts to determine if the uninformed parent or non-custodial parent has maintained substantial and continuous contact with the minor and, if so, shall make diligent efforts to notify that parent or non-custodial parent of the decision prior to issuing the order. 3. A parent or legal guardian may consent to an order not to resuscitate on behalf of a minor only if there has been a written determination by the attending physician, with the written concurrence of another physician selected by a person authorized by the hospital to make such selections given after personal examination of the patient, that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the minor suffers from one of the medical conditions set forth in paragraph (c) of subdivision three of section twenty-nine hundred sixty-five of this article. Each determination shall be included in the patient's medical chart. 4. (a) A parent or legal guardian of a minor, in making a decision regarding cardiopulmonary resuscitation, shall consider the minor patient's wishes, including a consideration of the minor patient's religious and moral beliefs, and shall express a decision consenting to issuance of an order not to resuscitate either (i) in writing, dated and signed in the presence of one witness eighteen years of age or older who shall sign the decision, or (ii) orally, to two persons eighteen years of age or older, one of whom is a physician affiliated with the hospital in which the patient is being treated. Any such decision shall be recorded in the patient's medical chart. (b) The attending physician who is provided with the decision of a minor's parent or legal guardian, expressed pursuant to this subdivision, and of the minor if the minor has capacity, shall include such decision or decisions in the minor's medical chart and shall comply with the provisions of paragraph (b) of subdivision four of section twenty-nine hundred sixty-five of this article. (c) If the attending physician has actual notice of the opposition of a parent or non-custodial parent to consent by another parent to an order not to resuscitate a minor, the physician shall submit the matter to the dispute mediation system and such order shall not be issued or shall be revoked in accordance with the provisions of subdivision three of section twenty-nine hundred seventy-two of this article.