Clinicians may face new ethical considerations when parents continue pregnancies after receiving life-limiting fetal diagnoses and desire palliative care. In this article we present four ethical considerations in perinatal palliative care: ambiguous terminology in relation to diagnosis or prognosis, differences between bereavement support and palliative care, neonatal organ donation, and postdeath cooling. In this article, we enable readers to consider current topics from different perspectives and reflect on care when confronted with sensitive clinical scenarios.
Keywords: clinical ethics; organ donation; perinatal bereavement; perinatal palliative care; shared decision making.
Copyright © 2017 AWHONN, the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.