“We have nothing left to bury.”

After miscarrying in the hospital at eleven weeks, a patient gratefully accepts the hospital’s offer to take advantage of a program for low-income patients that provides burial for fetal remains and a memorial plaque for the gravesite. However, a hospital employee accidentally incinerates the remain...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Hastings Center report
Authors: Brummett, Abram (Author) ; Thornton, Andrea (Author) ; Salter, Erica K. (Author) ; Deters, Samuel (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley 2022
In: The Hastings Center report
Year: 2022, Volume: 52, Issue: 1, Pages: 12-14
Further subjects:B doctor-patient relationship
B benevolent deception
B apology in medical practice
B truth management
B Miscarriage
B disclosure of medical error
B clinical ethics
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Summary:After miscarrying in the hospital at eleven weeks, a patient gratefully accepts the hospital’s offer to take advantage of a program for low-income patients that provides burial for fetal remains and a memorial plaque for the gravesite. However, a hospital employee accidentally incinerates the remains, and the error is not discovered until after the ashes are discarded. Two commentaries offer opposing arguments in response to the question whether, to avoid adding to the patient’s grief, it is ethically permissible for the clinicians not to disclose the error to her and to proceed with having the name put on a plaque at the burial ground.
ISSN:1552-146X
Contains:Enthalten in: Hastings Center, The Hastings Center report
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1002/hast.1335