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The Impact of the Child Abuse Amendments on Nursing Staff and Their Care of Handicapped Newborns

  • Chapter
Compelled Compassion

Abstract

This chapter will discuss:

  1. 1

    The impact of misinterpretation of the Child Abuse Amendments on infant treatment decisions, particularly in reference to “instrumentalists’ ”overtreatment of extremely premature infants;

  2. 2

    How nurses’ and physicians’ interactions with infants may result in differing conclusions about the success or futility of treatment, thus producing different opinions about the relevance of the amendments;

  3. 3

    The impact of overtreatment resulting from the amendments on nursing staff morale, especially in terms of erosion of a sense of ethical integrity; and

  4. 4

    The impact of overtreatment on nurses’ relationships with physicians and with families.

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Penticuff, J.H. (1992). The Impact of the Child Abuse Amendments on Nursing Staff and Their Care of Handicapped Newborns. In: Caplan, A.L., Blank, R.H., Merrick, J.C. (eds) Compelled Compassion. Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0409-1_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0409-1_10

  • Publisher Name: Humana Press, Totowa, NJ

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-6749-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-0409-1

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