Ethics for the Pediatrician: Just Distribution of Health-care Resources and the Neonatal ICU

Exploring societal solidarity in the context of extreme prematurity

“…However, assessments of societal support and solidarity will become more important with recent calls for a sustainable health system [21]. Resource allocation has many inherent ethical concerns that are beyond the scope of this paper [26][27][28], but, of relevance to this discussion, the more a healthcare system redistributes resources to the members of the collective, the more it is suggested to be an articulation of solidarity [15,16]. Our study has several limitations.…”

Neonatal Bioethical Perspectives: Practice Considerations

“…Therefore, the aim of this article is to (a) summarize the extant neonatal bioethical literature to appreciate the complex ethical issues that translate into practice challenges, (b) present a framework that guides the assessment of the benefits and burdens of neonatal intensive care in the clinical setting to solicit and provoke dialogue, and (c) provide examples that advocate for educational training for neonatal health care providers in support of ethically sound care to affected families and infants. [6][7][8] This paradigm shift has resulted in complex legal, moral, political, economic, spiritual, and anthropologic issues requiring cautious and complex scrutiny by those caring for these infants and families. 1 Although a general decline in infant mortality rate was seen throughout the twentieth century, the U.S. rate did not decline significantly from 2000 to 2005, ranking 30th in the world in 2005.…”