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The right thing as in what is professionally or legally expected in the situation, aka the "standard of care".You're equating doing the "right thing" (whatever that means) and the "cover your butt" thing.
What is actually the least likely thing to happen here is that a patient in that situation goes home and actually kills themselves sometime within a timeframe which you might actually be held liable for this. It's even less likely that a bad outcome occurs AND the parents try to sue you for it (as they would be the ones with standing for a suit) AFTER agreeing to take the kid home. That is actually far and away the statistically least likely thing to occur here, no matter what they say in the ER. The comparison between smoking and lung cancer isn't even close.
I am fine agreeing to disagree on that point. There is absolutely no world in which a patient details a plan to end their life that they have means/access to with intent is ever not having a 911/ED evaluation regardless of what a parent tells me. I have had this situation arise on several occasions and had a board complaint (that incidentally was immediately dropped) for requiring this, but I stand very steadfast in my resolve to continue to do this. I have heard the whole we sleep in the same room, have everything locked up speech and have also seen multiple patient's sneak into a bathroom and enact high lethality attempts despite that (once with an ICU, permeant injury outcome).
I personally care relatively little about the lawsuit issue, this has very little to do with covering my butt. It does have to deal with not being able to sleep at night if I did not do everything in my power to save the life of a child who confided in me as their doctor. I have absolutely no problem with hospitalizing 100 kids if it saves the lives of 1, although actually determining NNT is clearly impossible as the counterfactual can never be determined. I certainly am persuaded by the large body of research suggesting placing barriers between access to means results in less suicide. I guess I can imagine a reasonable argument for almost never hospitalizing someone for SI and using some alternative diversion process/treatment but I would certainly need to see literature to support it.