Ethics in a pediatric patient bearing non-transmissible chronic diseases

Abstract

An important dilemma in our pediatric medical practice is the attention of the child bearing non-transmissible-chronic-diseases, entities permanently affecting the child and, as a result, the child presents disabilities in several aspects of his life, to which a somber and sometimes fatal prognosis is added; they also reflect in the family and the surroundings where they grow, generating in their parents and relatives many questions and altering all the familiar dynamics. We have to offer all the members of the family not only medical care but also a great respect and comprehension that could contribute to diminish the stigmatization commonly conditioned by these diseases. We analyze the ethical problems related not only with the doctor but also with the family, situations in which it is necessary to take decisions affecting the autonomic right of the pediatric patients because of obvious age reasons, and always on the basis of the informed consent. All of this, never forgetting that, as difficult as it occasionally may be, our behavior should be ruled by the principles of the pediatric medicine ethics in general sense, specially in the case we are dealing with, combined with the ethic of the child and his family, because it is a social right in our system and an ethic principle of our medicine, as it was expressed by Fidel in the concept of Revolution: “We should never disregard.”