Ethical dilemmas in critically ill children in Hong Kong

The attending physicians are not obliged to treat a dead person.6 7 However, parents or carers sometimes demand futile treatment for patients in the PICU.8 A hospital ethics committee may help resolve such matters where the requested treatment may not be in the best interest of the patient. [...]when their child is exposed to life-altering changes, parents may be forced to consider a difficult balance between this protective role and the realistic outcome focusing on quality of life. KL Hon 1; Karen KY Leung 1; Jeff CP Wong 1; SY Qian 2; Patrick Ip 3 1 Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, Hong Kong 2 Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Beijing Children’s Hospital, Capital Medical University, National Center for Children’s Health, China 3 Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong