This volume offers a theoretical and practical overview of the ethics of pediatric medicine. It serves as a fundamental handbook and resource for pediatricians, nurses, residents in training, graduate students, and practitioners of ethics and healthcare policy. Written by a team of leading experts, Pediatric Bioethics addresses those difficult ethical questions concerning the clinical and academic practice of pediatrics, including an approach to recognizing boundaries when confronted with issues such as end of life care, life-sustaining treatment, extreme prematurity, pharmacotherapy, and research. Thorny topics such as what constitutes best interests, personhood, or distributive justice and public health concerns such as immunization and newborn genetic screening are also addressed.

This volume provides a practical overview of the ethical issues arising in pediatric practice. The case-based approach grounds the bioethical concepts in real-life situations, covering a broad range of important and controversial topics, including informed consent, confidentiality, truthfulness and fidelity, ethical issues relating to perinatology and neonatology, end-of-life issues, new technologies, and problems of justice and public health in pediatrics. A dedicated section also addresses the topics of professionalism, including boundary issues, conflicts of interests and relationships with industry, ethical issues arising during training, and dealing with the impaired or unethical colleague. Each chapter contains a summary of the key issues covered and recommendations for approaching similar situations in other contexts. Clinical Ethics in Pediatrics: A Case-Based Textbook is an essential resource for all physicians who care for children, as well as medical educators, residents and scholars in clinical bioethics.

This book assists health care providers to understand the specific interplay of the roles and relationships currently forming the debates in pediatric clinical ethics. It builds on the fact that, unlike adult medical ethics, pediatric ethics begins within an acutely and powerfully experienced dynamic of patient-family-state-physician relationship. The book provides a unique perspective as it interacts with established approaches as well as recent developments in pediatric ethics theory, and then explores these developments further through cases. The book first focuses on setting the stage by introducing a theoretical framework and elaborating how pediatric ethics differ from non-pediatric ethics. It approaches different theoretical frameworks in a critical manner drawing on their strengths and weaknesses. It helps the reader in developing an ability to engage in ethical reasoning and moral deliberation in order to focus on the wellbeing of the child as the main participant in the ethical deliberation, as well as to be able to identify the child’s moral claims. The second section of the book focuses on the practical application of these theoretical frameworks and discusses specific areas pertaining to decision-making. These are: the critically ill child, new and enduring ethical controversies, and social justice at large, the latter of which includes looking at the child’s place in society, access to healthcare, social determinants of health, and vaccinations. With the dynamic changes and challenges pediatric care faces across the globe, as well as the changing face of new technologies, no professional working in the field of pediatrics can afford not to take due note of this resource.

This work examines the many ethical issues related to health care in children. It explores the moral obligations of families and clinicians facing hard choices for critically ill and dying children, ranging from neonates to adolescents. It also addresses the ethical concerns in research, genetic testing and screening, and surgical and medical enhancement

This book offers easy access to the everyday ethics problems that occur in the medical care of children. It contains practical guidance on how physicians and other healthcare practitioners may manage both straightforward and complex ethics problems. The book provides a readable and comprehensive introduction to ethics issues for beginners and is also extremely valuable to experienced practitioners.This work covers important "classical" ethical issues such as privacy, confidentiality, truth telling, and discusses the elements of the relationships that might exist between parents and healthcare providers. However, the book also provides a resource for new and emerging areas of bioethics. These include issues arising in the new population of children who are beginning to survive the neonatal and infant periods with a multitude of problems – “children with medical complexity". Finally, it also includes a section on the advantages and pitfalls of social media use.

Offers a compelling theory of bioethics, covering medical assistance-in-dying, the right to health care, abortion, animal research, and the definition of death.

Background -- Evaluating the worry -- Proposed justifications -- Human interests and human causes -- Our connection to our contribution -- The value of passive contributions -- Implications -- Objections and the potential for abuse.

This book examines the many ethical issues that are encountered in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). It supports pediatricians, nurses, residents, and other providers in their daily management of critically ill children with the dilemmas that arise. It begins by examining the evolution of pediatric critical care, and who is now impacted by this advancing medical technology. Subsequent chapters explore specific ethical concerns and controversies that are commonly encountered. These topics include how to conduct end-of-life discussions with families facing a myriad of challenging choices. It goes on to explore the concept of futility, and what that does and does not mean in the pediatric ICU setting. Controversial subjects such as children as organ donors, particularly using donation after cardiac death, in addition to issues surrounding the declaration of brain death are covered. Additional chapters address resource allocation, and also analyze the use of long-term technology in chronically critically ill children. Chapters include case examples with guidance on how to work through similar difficulties and decision-making. While this book is specifically targeted for care providers at the ICU bedside, it is also of benefit to medical students, students in bioethics, practicing ethical consultants and families who are dealing with critically ill children.

Children in precarious health present particular problems for healthcare professionals because of their intimate relation to their family, and because of the family's need to provide major long-term source of support and to be actively involved in the decisions about their children's care. This collection of cases and commentaries in pediatrics highlights the difficult ethical dilemmas that can arise during high-tech hospital care of children in precarious circumstances. It serves as a teaching tool for clinical ethics and as an introduction for medical students and residents. Clinical cases are described in detail by the physicians involved, who focus on the ethical issues arising during treatment. Each case is then commented on in detail by a philosopher or other bioethicist. It thus serves well as an introduction to contemporary clinical bioethics, but with a firm grounding in the practicalities of real-life pediatric care in the hospital setting.

Utilizing a form of medical ethnography to investigate a variety of pediatric contexts, Richard B. Miller tests the fit of different ethical approaches in various medical settings to arrive at a new paradigm for how best to care for children. Miller contends that the principle of beneficence must take priority over autonomy in the treatment of children. Yet doctors alone cannot decide what is best for the child. Determining and implementing such decisions, Miller argues, doctors must become part of a "therapeutic alliance" with families and the child undergoing medical care to arrive at the best course of treatment.Children, Ethics, and Modern Medicine combines strong philosophical argumentation with firsthand knowledge of the issues facing children and families in pediatric care. This book will be an invaluable resource for medical ethicists and practitioners in pediatric care, as well as parents struggling with ethical issues in the care and treatment of their children.