Prenatally-diagnosed renal failure: an ethical framework for decision-making

Abstract

The Children's Hospital Working Group has developed an ethical framework to guide patient care and research for prenatally diagnosed severe renal anomalies. It identifies ethical challenges in communication, timing of decisions and scarce resources. Key elements include shared decision-making, establishing a trusting relationship, and managing disagreement. The ethical framework will be used to develop a clinical pathway that operationalizes the key values of trust, honesty, transparency, beneficence, nonmaleficence, respecting parental authority, professional integrity, and justice.