Ethical issues related to caring for low birth weight infants

Currently preterm births are the leading causes of newborn deaths and newborn mortality in developed countries. Infants born prematurely remain vulnerable to many acute complications and long-term disabilities. There is a growing concern surrounding the moral and ethical implications of the complex and technological care being provided to extremely low birth weight infants in neonatal intensive care units in the developed nations.

The purpose of this study was to describe the ethical and moral issues that neonatal intensive care nurses experience when caring for low birth weight preterm infants and their families.

A phenomenological method design was used to describe the lived experiences of nurses with ethical and moral issues encountered in the neonatal intensive care unit. One-on-one, semi-structured interviews using open-ended questions were used to gather data from the participants.

The setting for this study was a 97-bed neonatal intensive care. A total of 16 female nurses were interviewed.

Approval to conduct the research study was obtained from the institutional review board of the hospital where the study was conducted. Formal signed consent was obtained from each participant. To ensure confidentiality, each participant was asked to choose a confederate name to be used in the interview and the transcriptions.

The thematic analysis identified five recurring themes: (a) at the edge of viability, (b) infant pain and discomfort, (c) crucial decisions, (d) communicating with parents, and (e) letting go.

Neonatal intensive care unit nurses indicated that they often had challenges to their own sense of morality as they struggled to protect the infant from pain and unnecessary discomfort, provide care to an infant and their family whom they thought was faced with a lifetime of challenges and poor health, accepting decisions made by parents, and feeling as if parents were not adequately informed about outcomes.