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Paper Presentation

Education/Interprofessionalism

Session: Moral Distress

Clinical Ethics Needs Assessment in Pediatricians and Pediatric Residents Working in Ethiopia: A National Survey

Saturday, September 21, 2024
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM CT
Location: Midway 6 (First Floor)
Abstract: Pediatricians encounter ethically challenging cases in clinical practice throughout the world. In Ethiopia, ethically distressing pediatric cases are heightened by limited resources, lack of ethical frameworks to guide clinical care and withdrawal of supportive therapies, absence of child protection laws, and dearth of trained ethics consultants or institutional ethics committees providing clinical ethics consultation. Ethics training remains limited in undergraduate medical programs and absent in the resident curriculum at most institutions.
To better understand the ethics education needs of Pediatricians and Pediatric Residents in Ethiopia, we conducted a national survey at the Ethiopian Pediatric Society Annual Conference. The survey was completed by 200 participants (response rate 92%). Most participants (85.8 %) felt their clinical ethics training was inadequate. Furthermore, 58% reported no established/ formal method to address ethical concerns in their respective hospitals. Most common ethical dilemmas faced by participants included refusal of treatment by patient/family, disagreement between the healthcare team and patient/family, withholding/withdrawing life-prolonging measures (70%,59.5%, 51.5%). The majority of participants (89.5%) desired additional training. Areas of interest for further training were withholding/withdrawing life-prolonging measures, refusal of treatment by patient/family and legal issues (45%, 46.5%, 40% respectively). In this session, we will discuss the findings of this survey, and opportunities to improve clinical ethics education for Ethiopian pediatricians. We will also engage the audience in discussion around potential strategies to support pediatric clinicians in low-income settings with ethical challenges they encounter in daily practice which remain unaddressed by their individual health care institutions and medical education.

Learning Objectives:

After participating in this conference, attendees should be able to:
  • Describe how clinical ethical challenges may worsen by limited resources, lack of ethical guidance, and unavailability of clinical ethics consultation in low-income healthcare settings.
  • Understand how the limited opportunity for ethics education in training contributes to difficulty resolving dilemmas in practice and moral distress for Ethiopian pediatricians and trainees.
  • Examine potential strategies to support pediatric clinicians working in low-income settings in addressing ethical challenges that arise in their day-to-day clinical practice.
Bitseat Haile – Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Pediatrics and Child Health, Yekatit 12 Medical College; Eyob Kebede – EthiopianThoracic Society; Stephanie Kukora – Children's Mercy Kansas City; Addishiwot Melesse – Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Pediatrics and Child Health, Addis Ababa University; Atnafu Tekleab – Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College; Betelehem B. Kassa – Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health, Pediatrics and Child Health, Addis Ababa University