Background and aim: Current practice in prenatal diagnosis becomes challenging with new bioethics issues emerging constantly during daily clinical routine. Although fetal interventions are driven by a motivation to improve the health of the fetus, progress in fetal therapies raises issues of maternal autonomy. The objective of this article is to assess bioethics in prenatal diagnosis in Greece as well as bioethics education.
Methods: The study was conducted between October 2018 and December 2019. Two hundred and twenty eligible responders were involved in fetal and perinatal medicine in Greece. The questionnaire was developed as a Likert scale. Part 1 covered the participants' general opinion about bioethics. Part 2 covered ethical dilemmas likely to arise when routine screening presents a complicated result.
Results: In the study, 92.3% of the participants considered that the branch of bioethics is necessary in medical practice. Regarding challenging bioethics issues, only 86% of the participants consider that the miscarriage risk should be discussed after an invasive procedure. Furthermore, it is not clear for responders whether informed consent is a medical or legal obligation (43% vs 33%) and whether information should be provided orally or written (49% vs 46%). Finally, 32% of healthcare practitioners declare that they are not fully aware of the law concerning the rights of the fetus.
Conclusions: Although healthcare professionals acknowledge the distinct role of bioethics, mismanagement of ethical dilemmas reveals that under-graduate teaching of this discipline is not addressed effectively. Identifying the parameters that would improve the learning process would make a significant contribution in the routine clinical practice.
Keywords: bioethical dilemmas; bioethics; health professionals education; informed consent; prenatal counselling.
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