[Ethical dilemmas in pediatrics: on competencies and qualifications in decision making]

In medicine medical decisions prove to be ethical issues. Whether treatment apart from being medically possible can also be meaningful, or can continue to be meaningful, is an ethical question, where interests, in nature different and sometimes contradictory, must be balanced against each other. In the department of paediatrics the doctor does not have to deal only with the patient himself, but he has also to deal with the parents, who have an interest of their own apart from the child's interest that they want to defend. A personal interpretation of standards and values can lead doctors and parents to different ways of considering the interest of the child. This can interfere with an ethically justified decision. What is essential in this discussion are the limits of everyone's proficiency, competence and responsibility. Starting from a case these notions and their implications for decisions-making will be worked out.