A Question of Ethics: Talking About Disability: Suffering, Quality of Life and Value Distinctions

Talking about disability in clinical encounters with parents, families, and patients can be very challenging. Decision-making around benefits and burdens of interventions and how they impact what future life for a child might be like inherently includes discussions of disability. However, it is easy for these conversations to view disability as something wholly negative, making it feel, or even it becoming, subject to many types of value distinctions. This can be a difficult space to navigate, especially for pediatric clinicians supporting families in informed decision making. We talk with bioethicist Jaime Konerman-Sease about the nuances of talking about disability, quality of life, and suffering, and how we can talk about disability with our patients and families.
View the transcript here:
https://www.childrensmn.org/for-health-professionals/talking-pediatrics-podcast/talking-pediatrics-a-question-of-ethics-talking-about-disability-8-8-25/