Trisha Prentice is a neonatologist in Melbourne who has been working with Annie Janvier and Peter Davis examining the occurrence and causes of moral distress in the NICU. They have already published a systematic review of the subject (Prentice T, et al. Moral distress within neonatal and paediatric intensive care units: a systematic review. Arch Dis Child. 2016;101(8):701-8) and the first in what will be a series of publications about her research (Prentice TM, et al. Always a burden? Healthcare providers’ perspectives on moral distress. Archives of disease in childhood Fetal and neonatal edition. 2018;103(5):F441-F5). Of which a one sentence summary is : all professionals in the NICU experience moral distress, that it is usually when parents want to continue care after the caregiver thinks that it would be preferable to redirect to comfort care, and most caregivers think that it is inevitable in a setting such as ours that moral distress will occur, and indeed it may have value as a stimulus for us to examine our preconceptions.

She will be presenting a webinar on Wednesday 24th of October at midday Kansas CIty time, as part of the excellent series of pediatric bioethics webinars run out of the Kansas City Children’s Mercy Hospital Bioethics Center, under the direction of John Lantos.

You have to register in order to participate in the webinars, which you can do from here https://www.childrensmercy.org/bioethics/webinars-and-podcasts/ but they are free and open to all.