Ethical Issues of End of Life Decisions in Pediatrics
A special issue of Children (ISSN 2227-9067).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2024) | Viewed by 7011
Special Issue Editor
2. Department of Paediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana Bohoričeva 20, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Interests: critically ill newborn infants and children; transportation medicine; medical and research ethics; adult, pediatric and neonatal intensive care medicine; palliative care medicine; philosophy; medical ethics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
End-of-life (EOL) decision making is a process of recognizing that further treatment of a patient, whether it is in the intensive care unit or in the ward, is only serving to prolong life without being in the patient’s best interest. The forgoing of life support treatment (LST) when the EOL is approaching and moving from curative to palliative care is ethically one of the most difficult decisions for health care professionals. “Withholding” means not introducing new treatment options and intensifying treatment options that a patient is already undergoing; meanwhile, “withdrawing” refers to discontinuing treatment that a patient is already undergoing.
Different practices regarding the implementation of EOL decisions and forgoing LST in pediatric patients can be found in the literature.
The aim of this Special issue is to gather articles from different parts of the world, both developed and underdeveloped countries, and to obtain information on how healthcare professionals (not only physicians but also registered nurses and others) approach and solve ethical dilemmas and make final ethical decisions on EOL and forgoing LST.
We believe that varieties in our EOL decisions enrich our knowledge and improve mutual understanding between different approaches all over the world, and help to better understand the value of life—especially children’s lives—when no treatment besides palliative care is possible.
Prof. Dr. Štefan Grosek
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- forgoing life support treatment (LST)
- end-of-life decision (EOL)
- ethics
- children
- infants
- palliative care
- withholding
- withdrawing
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