Neonatal Intensive Care: Parents’Role in Ethical Decision Making
BirthPublished 1 September 1986
Helen Harrison
Citations22
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.01
SNIP1.21
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TL;DR
Parents can take steps to enter the decision-making process in newborn intensive care, and the sometimes disastrous use of unproved medications and procedures in what amounts to uncontrolled experimentation on NICU populations.
Abstract
ABSTRACT: Who should decide on treatments and life‐sustaining procedures for seriously malformed and extremely premature newborns? The Baby Doe legislation takes most life‐and‐death decisions out of the hands of both parents and physicians, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) staff may not present day‐to‐day treatment decisions to parents as ethical ones. Informed consent doctrines and physician expertise and objectivity cannot be relied upon as guides to ethical decision making. This is illustrated by several well‐publicized NICU cases, and by the sometimes disastrous use of unproved medications and procedures in what amounts to uncontrolled experimentation on NICU populations. Parents can take steps to enter the decision‐making process in newborn intensive care.
Keywords
Medicine
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