Following evidence-based approaches to evaluating and reporting suspicion of child maltreatment can help minimize bias and promote equity.

Separation of children from their parents is one possible traumatizing consequence of a mandated report, which is not to be taken lightly.

When health care professionals encounter child abuse and neglect, they tend to experience a range of emotions, such as anger, sadness, and frustration.

If it is ethically justifiable for clinicians to err by overreporting suspected abuse and neglect, we must fairly distribute benefits and harms among all children and families.

This narrative illuminates need for students and clinicians to be well prepared to face ethically and structurally complex realities of identifying and responding to children.

When regulatory decisions express overconfidence, one risk is that the costliness or misinformation will exacerbate health inequity.

Dr Mark G. Kuczewski joins Ethics Talk to talk about teaching health professions students and trainees how to care well for undocumented patients.