“Decision-Making in the Pediatric Critical Care Setting”

Dr. Mark Mercurio, from Yale University, delivered the 9th annual Matthew Vandivier Sims Lecture, “Decision-Making in the Pediatric Critical Care Setting," at Indiana University on April 20, 2010. Dr. Mercurio is Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Yale Pediatric Ethics Program.

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• Introduction by Prof. Richard B. Miller
  
• Opening remarks by Dr. Mercurio
  Outline of lecture
  Medical decision-making (beneficence and autonomy)
  
• Patient's best interests
  Parental authority vs. patient autonomy
  Physician's role in decision-making
  
• Justification for overriding parents (futility, rights of those involved)
  
• Ruling by Academy on Pediatrics
  Gray zone of 23 weeks of gestation
  
• Predictors of fetus' survival
  
• Balancing the child's rights with the parents' rights (case study)
  Doctrine of informed consent
  Competence to make medical decisions
  Emancipated or mature minor
  Shared responsibility for decision-making
  
• Professional humility
  Physicians as moral agents
  
• Q & A session