The Right to Physical Integrity for Child Patients Jeopardized in Health and Medical Care?

Abstract

Sweden was the first country in the world banning corporal punishment in 1979, protecting children’s physical and mental integrity. Forty years later, this fundamental view on children’s rights, respecting the child’s integrity, has not had any effect in Swedish health and medical care when children are patients. In this article, children’s rights when the child is a patient will be discussed in relation to the Swedish Patient Act (pa, 2014:81) and the advocacy role of Swedish patient organisations. It is shown that children’s rights in the Patient Act are constructed based on the child patient as deviant and subordinated to adult patients and parental rights, making not only the child’s voice subject to valuation by adults, but also the child’s integrity. Further, the patient organisations, acting as advocates for different patient groups in the legislative process, stay silent on issues concerning child patients’ basic human rights.