ABSTRACT
If the physicians attempt to resuscitate, the child will receive the interventions of intensive care immediately after birth, some of which are possibly painful or the cause of suffering, with the foreseeable need to continue such interventions for days, weeks, or months in a critical care unit. While death itself is finitude for the dead, an ending for what had begun, for the still living, death leaves a trace or a shadow that in its absent presence never actually dies. Instead, the antenatal consultation literature focuses on informational needs around such issues as: survival, development, parenting practices, and length of hospitalization. For the field of neonatal-perinatal medicine, outcomes for clinical conversations have traditionally been chosen based on reading of the literature. The problem for neonatal-perinatal medicine is that various outcomes have been “fixed into practice” without ever having been evaluated by families and other non-healthcare provider stakeholders.
