Ethical Decision in the NICU

542 Words2 Pages

I once did not realize the ethics of medical care of an infant, let alone one that is ill in the NICU. Baby Dylan was at 23 weeks gestation when mother Jennifer and father Kevin gave birth to him. He seemed like a little human eager to live but even the latest advances in medicine were unable to keep him alive. I believe that the parents ended up making the correct decision for baby Dylan. If he ended up being a “keeper” he still could have had severe neurological and respiratory problems for the rest of his life. Decision-making not always the easiest thing to do when it comes to the balance of someone’s life in your hands, you just never know what choice is the right one. The doctors and nurses handled themselves very well while being under the pressure of hopeful parents. One thing that affected me was that so many medical professionals were against giving the child a chance to fight in the first place. One physician from Switzerland, Jeremy Irons said that they don’t normally try to resuscitate a child unless it is over 25 weeks gestation. Meaning that in their country doctors...

Show More
Related

  • The Strange Case of Marlise Munoz and John Peter Smith Hospital

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are many ethical paradigms through which humans find guidance and justification for their own actions. In the case of contractarianism, citizens of a state are entitled to human rights, considered to be unalienable, and legal rights, which are both protected by the state. As Spinello says, “The problem with most rights-based theories is that they do not provide adequate criteria for resolving practical disputes when rights are in conflict” (14). One case that supports Spinello is the case of Marlise Munoz, a brain-dead pregnant thirty-three year old, who was wrongly kept on life support for nearly two months at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. Misinterpretation of the Texas Advance Directives Act by John Peter Smith Hospital led to the violation of the contractarian paradigm. Although the hospital was following the directive in order to maintain legal immunity for its hospital staff, the rights of the family were violated along with the medical fundamental principle to “first, do no harm.”

    Read More

  • The Andrew Bedner Case

    165 Words  | 1 Pages

     How it relates to healthcare: The child’s injuries proved severe, and Bedner faced a long prison sentence if convicted,but he didn’t face murder charges.As his critically ill daughter,C.B. remained on life support  the hospital sought to exclude Bender from decisions regarding from life support. The girl eventually did die, but the case generated considerable public debate and stimulated a controversy among bioethics scholars .

    Read More

  • A Medical Case Study on Charlotte Wyatt by the BBC

    1599 Words  | 4 Pages

    This case was taken into the British court system where, after a long trial, a judge upheld the doctor’s decision not to resuscitate. The reasoning was that the judge felt he could not order the doctors to perform actions that would cause increased suffering for the child. After considering the doctrines of the sanctity of life and the...

    Read More

  • Is it Ethical to Have a Child for the Purpose of Saving another Child´s Life?

    1010 Words  | 3 Pages

    ‘Is it ethical to have a child for the purpose of saving another child’s life?’

    Read More

  • Little Man Movie Analysis

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    Step 1: patient education. The information that is given to the patients should be accurate, thorough, and easy to understand. We need to discuss the options with Gwen and Nicole. Apparently, they have the choice of termination or continuation of the pregnancy. If they choose to continue the pregnancy, they have the option of keeping the baby or putting it up for adoption once it’s born. In order to make an informed decision of whether to keep the baby or not, the couple need to have a comprehensive understanding of the medical conditions that the baby may have if it’s born, the responsibilities that they will face to take care of the baby, and the possible impacts of those responsibilities on their relationship and family life. The doctors and nurses have the responsibilities to deliver the information, help the couple to understand the situation, and answer any questions that they have. As nurses, we need to be unbiased and non-judgmental. Support the couples’ decision anyway we can. Ideally, information should be delivered

    Read More

  • Ethical Dilemmas In The Neotensive Care Unit (NICU)

    1112 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ethical issues are present in every aspect of healthcare. Ethical dilemmas in the Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are especially difficult because the patient cannot express him/herself. It is therefore the responsibility of the parents to make the decisions regarding treatment. It is the nurse’s job to advocate for the patient to ensure that they are receiving the best possible care. The cost of care, termination of treatment, and the nurses’ role in the termination of treatment are all factors that are included in the care of patients that are suffering in the NICU.

    Read More

  • Treating or Terminating: The Dilemma of Impaired Infants and the Right to Be Human

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aiding the death of infants is a much disputed controversy in healthcare. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. provides an ethical view that there is a moral duty not to treat an impaired infant when this will only prolong a painful life or would only lead to a painful death. It is these individuals, like Engelhardt, who must defend this position against groups who consider that we have the ability to prolong the lives of impaired infants, thus we are obligated to do so.

    Read More

  • Genetic Interventions and the Ethics of Enhancement of Human Beings by Julian Savulescu

    3287 Words  | 7 Pages

    Parker, Michael. "The Best Possible Child." Journal of Medical Ethics 33.5 (2007): 279-283. Web. 1 Apr 2011. .

    Read More

  • Ethical Decision Making in Nursing

    1906 Words  | 4 Pages

    I chose to go into nursing because I had taken a sports medicine class in high school I enjoyed, and I thought I would be guaranteed a job graduating that had something to do with medicine. I can remember being so excited to learn how about illnesses and medications, and all the difference procedures done in the hospital. At the time I thought a nurse’s job was to do what the physicians said, and I expected set guidelines that would tell me what I was and wasn’t allowed to do. I had no idea that I was entering onto a career path involving so much complexity, and that the skills I had dreamed of learning were such a small part of nursing in comparison to the emotional, decision making, and critical thinking skills that a nursing career requires. Ethics in nursing was not something that had ever crossed my mind when I chose to take this path, however now ethics is something that I think about every day I am practicing, whether in clinical or theory courses. Ethical theories often come from the idea that because we are human we have the obligation to care about other’s best interests (Kozier et al., 2010), however in nursing ethical practice is not just a personal choice but a professional responsibility.

    Read More

  • Medical Ethics

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Physician-assisted suicide refers to the physician acting indirectly in the death of the patient -- providing the means for death. The ethics of PAS is a continually debated topic. The range of arguments in support and opposition of PAS are vast. Justice, compassion, the moral irrelevance of the difference between killing and letting die, individual liberty are many arguments for PAS. The distinction between killing and letting die, sanctity of life, "do no harm" principle of medicine, and the potential for abuse are some of the arguments in favor of making PAS illegal. However, self-determination, and ultimately respect for autonomy are relied on heavily as principle arguments in the PAS issue.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Christine Mitchell's When Living Is A Fate Worse Than Death

    848 Words  | 2 Pages

    The doctors in Haiti thought Charlotte should not be resuscitated, undergo anymore horrible treatments and die peacefully. Charlotte’s parents were not happy with the doctor’s guidelines and thought the United States medical care would have better technology and could save their daughter. Charlotte’s parents bought her a doll which Charlotte’s parents thought otherwise, the Ethics Advisory Committee had to get involved. The debate surrounded if the doctors were in the right to control the life of someone who were incapable of deciding themselves, or is it the parents right. The Ethics Advisory Committee, stated that the parents were superior to those of the hospital and the hospital should conduct with less painful test.

    Read More

  • 'The Use Of Force By William Carlos Williams' The Use Of Force

    1385 Words  | 3 Pages

    But the mother being very concerned about the examination asked “ Do you think she can stand it, doctor!” (Williams 2). The father had already taken the examination into consideration that this is for the safety of his daughter so her said “ you get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you wants her to die of diphtheria?” (Williams 2). So in some cases the parents will allow the medical professional to use force on their child if it is the only option for the child and in this case the child 's life was in danger because she could possibly have a life threatening disease and the medical professional wanted to find out in order to save the small child 's

    Read More

  • Summary Of Ethical Issues In Neonatal Care

    850 Words  | 2 Pages

    With the improvement of the medicine and its medical system, the concept of ethics has become significantly acknowledged and have been greatly emphasized. Despite the increase in better, advanced medical quality, still many children every year in United States are born with medical conditions that prohibits them to live with normal, daily function which ultimately puts them into a situation whether being put under intensive care to prolong life or accepting the reality of upcoming death. Many caregivers question ethics when it comes to prolonging the life of the death of ill neonates wondering for whom they are doing this for and whether it is actually something the neonate and the family members would desire.

    Read More

  • Importance Of Saviour Siblings

    1727 Words  | 4 Pages

    However, to do it with under informed consent may be another thing. While everyone is concerned with the well being of the sick child, not a lot of thought goes to the saviour sibling. As famously stated from the Nash’s family’s case, some critics commented that Adam was like a “spare parts baby”. While the parents viciously denied the comment and argued that they raise Adam with equal love and care, it is undeniable that in some ways, Adam and some other saviour siblings were hauntingly similar to spare parts; if the sick child relapsed, then blood marrow, stem cell would be taken from the healthy child and transplanted into the sick child. This sort of thinking would severely harm the saviour siblings’ psychological state, as they would feel as if their creation was to become a “backup” for the sick child, not out of

    Read More

  • Voiceless Victims Research Paper

    2072 Words  | 5 Pages

    In a situation like this, any parent would defend their child in a blink of an eye. This is what the parents of Alfie, Charlie, and Israel simply did; they defended their child. There is not the right kind of respect in our court systems today for a family who face the possibility of losing a child. Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich tweeted, “The British government’s decision to allow two critically ill babies [Alfie and Charlie] to die in two years is a natural reflection of the culture of death and the steady increase in totalitarian tendencies among western governments”(Osborne). He recognizes that the deaths of these children were all outcomes in the removal of life support resulted from a court and doctor’s

    Read More

More about Ethical Decision in the NICU

Open Document