Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To evaluate whether health providers and families find ethics consultations helpful in identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical problems.
STUDY DESIGN:
Forty consecutive pediatric ethics consultations at the San Diego Children’s Hospital and Health Center were evaluated retrospectively through chart reviews and structured interviews with physicians, social workers, and family members.
RESULTS:
In 23 of 40 cases, physicians or social workers were successfully interviewed. Of these 23 cases, four family interviews were completed. Over 90% of physicians and social workers found the ethics consultation to be helpful and would recommend an ethics consultation to others in the same circumstances. Two of the four families were strongly dissatisfied with the consultation and identified miscommunication of the ethics consultant’s role as a major problem.
CONCLUSION:
The disparity observed in this study between satisfaction levels of health providers and families raises concerns. More studies that evaluate ethics consultations are needed, especially those that are designed prospectively and explore both these perspectives.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yen, B., Schneiderman, L. Impact of Pediatric Ethics Consultations on Patients, Families, Social Workers, and Physicians. J Perinatol 19, 373–378 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jp.7200188
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.jp.7200188
This article is cited by
-
Clinical ethics consultations: a scoping review of reported outcomes
BMC Medical Ethics (2022)
-
Evaluating assessment tools of the quality of clinical ethics consultations: a systematic scoping review from 1992 to 2019
BMC Medical Ethics (2020)
-
Rolle der Palliativmedizin in der pädiatrischen Intensivmedizin
Monatsschrift Kinderheilkunde (2019)
-
Conflicts Between Parents and Health Professionals About a Child’s Medical Treatment: Using Clinical Ethics Records to Find Gaps in the Bioethics Literature
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (2015)
-
Evaluating Parents’ Perspectives of Pediatric Ethics Consultation
HEC Forum (2013)