Ethical Considerations in End-of-Life Keepsake Creation

This session will explore healthcare ethical principles as they apply to the practices and processes involved in family centered end-of-life keepsake creation. A multitude of factors impact the ways we do this work and the impact it has on the patient, family, child life specialist, and medical teams involved in their care.

Within this presentation we will explore four core healthcare ethical principles- justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and autonomy. The ethical principle of justice leads us in the direction of equitably offering keepsakes to each family. Beneficence guides us toward practices that reflect the best interests of our patients and families. The principle of non-maleficence encourages us to consider the potential for unintended psychological or emotional harm when offering and facilitating keepsake creation with families. Autonomy indicates the importance of individualizing keepsake offerings to best reflect each child's unique legacy and relationships. Participants will explore how to equitably and sustainably offer individualized keepsakes through the lens of healthcare ethics, considering the capacity of individual child life specialists and programs.

The consideration of one's own emotional experience within legacy work is of utmost importance as it inherently affects the way we view our work. We all come into this work with existing beliefs and experiences surrounding the death of important people in our lives, the meaning of legacy, and practices that represent legacy. Decisions about how we carry out legacy work with families, particularly the creation of tangible keepsake items, can be subjective, driven by individual perspectives about what it means to engage in legacy work with a family. Using case example and exchange of viewpoints, participants will consider the multitude of factors that guide our processes and protocols when it comes to creating tangible legacy items at the end of a patient's life.

Presenters:

Christine C. Marcoux MS, CCLS, Aftercare Program Coordinator for Bereavement & Sibling Support, UNC Children's Hospital 

Suggested Domain: Intervention, Ethics

Credits: 1.0 PDU

Please note: All webinar content and its certificate will expire on 11/3/2029, regardless of when it is purchased, accessed, or completed. At that point, contents will no longer be available in any form, including as an archive or as a PDU certificate. It is the responsibility of the learner to complete the contents and download and save the certificate for their records prior to 11/3/2029.