Use of sedation and restraints is sometimes the only means available to stabilize medically fragile eating disorders patients. While minors are not given the option to refuse care that competent adults are, forced tube feeding nonetheless challenges the minor patient’s senses of identity and control. The following case study chronicles the management of an 11-year-old patient transferred from inpatient child psychiatry unit to the adolescent medicine service for nutritional rehabilitation.
A nurse recounts her experience as a new NICU nurse raising an issue about the appropriateness of a procedure with the rest of the medical team. The narrative addresses issues of power imbalance, ethical controversy, medical decision-making, and moral distress.
Care providers of critically ill pediatric patients encounter ethically complex and morally distressing situations in their practice. This study sought to identify whether providers remark on ethical conflicts or note moral distress following recent in hospital pediatric death.