Ethical Considerations in Collaborative Pediatric Kidney Care

As multidisciplinary models become more ubiquitous in medical settings, care teams must develop strategies to ensure that they are providing ethical, responsible care both as individual providers and as a unified team. Team members from different expertise areas bring a diverse set of perspectives and a range of experiences to patient care. While this level of collaboration can lead to improved patient experience and better health outcomes, it may also make navigating ethical dilemmas in clinical care more challenging. Teams must find ways to gather and value the input of each member while efficiently arriving at a consensus for action. Within this chapter, the benefits of identifying a unified framework—such as principlism—for navigating ethical dilemmas are discussed. Strategies for facilitating ethics-focused conversations among team members are also introduced. Additionally, a series of common ethical challenges that arise in the care of pediatric patients with kidney disease are discussed. Situations presented include addressing caregiver-based barriers to treatment, identifying criteria for kidney transplants as a team, navigating decisions about end-of-life care, and managing disclosures of information by patients to a select number of team members.