Need help defining ethical dilemmas

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What are some examples of ethical dilemmas that pediatric nurses encounter when caring for a patient with cancer and how does this affect the care we provide as nurses?

Please help i need examples.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

What has your research shown you so far? A Google search of "ethical dilemma in pediatric oncology" turns up about 179,000 results, including some professional journal articles. You can probably find even more professional journal articles using Google Scholar or your school's/employer's search platform.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Homework, right?

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No, APA paper almost done with it but im stuck on this one particular area.

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Specializes in NICU, ICU, PICU, Academia.

Well, a paper (APA or not) is homework.

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.

Think about the ethical principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice.

Beneficence and non-maleficence: to do good and to NOT to harm, respectively. Do the members of a child's care team always agree on what constitutes helpful or harmful? Will both parents always agree on a course of action? Do parents always have ideas that align with EBP...or could they refuse it in favor of crystals and essential oils to treat their child's Ebola'n'bubonic plague? (extreme example, but I'm trying to get you thinking.)

Autonomy: the right to self determination. Does a minor have goals for their medical care that differ from the legal decision maker? Say the pt is months shy from legal adulthood? How does autonomy work for someone with limited legal right to it?

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What do you say when a dying child asks if they are dying? You know they are but the parents don't want the child told.

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More like punishment haha

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Specializes in Pedi.

There's a very obvious one that comes up on the regular in pediatric oncology. What happens to children's blood counts after they get chemotherapy? How do you treat severe anemia in an oncology patient? How might this pose an ethical dilemma if the parents belong to a religion that forbids the treatment the child is going to need regularly?

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Specializes in Pedi.
Anonymous865 said:

And here's something to think about on this topic, OP. How would this patient's case have been different if the diagnosis was stage IV high risk neuroblastoma with n-myc amplification? Or diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma?

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