Withholding Information to Protect a Loved One

Pediatrics 6 (136) (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Parents respond to the death of a child in very different ways. Some parents may be violent or angry, some sad and tearful, some quiet and withdrawn, and some frankly delusional. We present a case in which a father’s reaction to his daughter’s death is a desire to protect his wife from the stressful information. The wife is in the second trimester of a high-risk pregnancy and so is particularly fragile. We asked pediatricians and bioethicists to discuss the ways in which they might respond to the father’s understandable but troubling request. The death of a young child is one of the most stressful events that can happen to parents. The stress of such a loss is compounded if the parents are in a foreign country, far from home, and without a network of family and friends to provide social support. The stress may be more difficult to deal with if the parents have acute health problems of their own. In this month’s “Ethics Rounds,” we present a case in which a father whose daughter died requested that the doctors delay telling his wife. His reason: She is pregnant, in the second trimester, and on bed rest because of preterm labor. He does not want to add to her stress. We asked both pediatricians and bioethicists to respond to this request.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive

    This entry is not archived by us. If you are the author and have permission from the publisher, we recommend that you archive it. Many publishers automatically grant permission to authors to archive pre-prints. By uploading a copy of your work, you will enable us to better index it, making it easier to find.

    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,601

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Groll on Bionormativity and the Value of Genetic Knowledge.Bradford Skow - 2023 - International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 16 (1):182-192.
Licensing Parents to Protect Our Children?Jurgen De Wispelaere & Daniel Weinstock - 2012 - Ethics and Social Welfare 6 (2):195-205.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-05-22

Downloads
0

6 months
0

Historical graph of downloads

Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Nabina Liebow
American University
Daniel Groll
Carleton College

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references