A study in the current issue of Pediatrics reports that parents of premature infants place a ’significantly’ higher value on their children’s lives, regardless of disability, than do health care workers who are involved in neonatal care decision-making.

Most health care workers surveyed said that having multiple disabilities is worse than death, whereas most parents of premature infants said that death would be worse than living with disabilities.

Researchers reported that parents of premature infants were most likely to want to save an infant at all costs. They say parents of premature infants who have experience caring for children with disabilities should be included in counseling new parents of critically ill infants.

Their participation is needed, the researchers say,

“so that a balanced view could be presented to parents of critically ill infants and increase the probaility that they would make informed decisions that they would not later regret.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, health care, medicine, parents, quality of life, research news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post