Splitting

Compromise

“…Another hospital issue where compromise is contentious involves parents who are highly and aggressively critical of staff. Such parents often try to split teams 4,5 . The situation is particularly difficult when a parent makes frequent complaints to the Health Department and threatens to go to the press.…”

“…Such parents often try to split teams. 4,5 The situation is particularly difficult when a parent makes frequent complaints to the Health Department and threatens to go to the press. The hospital executive has divided loyalties, torn between listening to and upholding the parent's complaints and supporting stressed hospital staff.…”

Children as voices and images for medicinal cannabis law reform

“…A dying child in Western Australia, Oshin Kiszko, became highly publicised in the context of attempts made by his parents, contrary to medical advice, to take him into palliative care, abandoning the provision of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, after he was diagnosed and operated on for medulloblastoma, a form of brain tumour (Okninski 2016;Freckelton 2016aFreckelton , 2016b. In the United Kingdom, Ashya King, diagnosed with medulloblastoma (O'Brien 2014), Charlie Gard, diagnosed with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (Wheeler 2018;Ross 2020;Montgomery 2019;Laszewska-Hellriegel 2019;Freckelton 2016aFreckelton , 2016b, Alfie Evans, diagnosed with GABA-transaminase deficiency (see Isaacs and Preisz 2019;Laszewska-Hellriegel 2019;Freckelton 2018), and Isaiah Haastrup diagnosed with severe hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (Jonas and Ryan 2020) attracted saturation publicity (Brick et al 2020). This was in a context of their parents seeking diverse forms of local and international medical assistance for their children's serious health conditions, although in a number of the instances their parents' proposals for treatment were regarded by clinicians as futile and not in the best interests of the children (see Savulescu and Wilkinson 2018).…”

Respect

“…It is extraordinarily confronting for an experienced intensive care nurse to work an entire shift with the parents muttering under their breath: ‘You'd think they would give us a nurse who knew what she was doing’, as happened at our hospital recently. Some families deliberately praise some doctors or nurses and refuse to let others look after their child, a phenomenon known as ‘splitting’ . Health care workers need to set limits regarding such passive‐aggressive behaviour and need to be supported by administrators in doing so.…”