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Article: Hopkins Children's study: Parents of dying newborns need clearer explanation of options.
- Article from:
- Biotech Week
- Article date:
- October 1, 2008
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Parent-doctor discussions about whether to maintain or withdraw life support from terminally ill or severely premature newborns are so plagued by miscommunication and misunderstanding that they might as well be in different languages, according to a small but potentially instructive new study from Johns Hopkins Children's Center reported in the September issue of Pediatrics (see also Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions).
In-depth interviews with 26 mothers of babies who died shortly after birth at three mid-Atlantic hospitals revealed that what mothers said they were told by doctors was often at odds with what physicians recorded in the medical chart with respect ...