When the patient delivers a low-birth-weight infant that requires extensive time in the neonatal intensive, should she be held responsible? Where do we draw the line? More importantly, on what basis do we draw the line?
At their best, good systems allow space for the practical judgment of health care professionals to achieve justice in the particular actions of their daily practice.
Using the patient’s worldview to challenge his or her decision and establish a treatment plan—implying the view is shared by the physician when it is not—could be seen as manipulative and deceptive.
Moral distress arises not only from organizational constraints on moral action but also from the environmental impacts of health care and climate change.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(6):617-628. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.6.mhst1-1706.
After the infant’s birth, the neonatologist’s first duty is to his or her patient—the newly born infant. If clinical circumstances are different than anticipated, the physician must first consider the best interests of the baby.
Having implied that a particular clinical decision had been made to “free up a hospital bed,” the attending physician walked away without further comments to the residents or talking with the patient.
The greatest pressure to resuscitate the extremely low-birth-weight infant often results from successful marketing efforts that lead families to expect that their premature infants will be cute and healthy.
Approximately two-thirds of men aged 50 and older diagnosed REM sleep behavior disorder develop neurologic disease, for which there is no prevention or treatment at present.