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90. Case: What is Best for Angela?
View Case Study: 90. Case: What is Best for Angela?Angela Flores is a six year old with some minor developmental delays caused by traumatic birth. She has recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor and her prognosis is poor. The health care team is trying to determine goals of care and a develop treatment plan. Angela lives with and is cared for by her…
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79. Case: It’s the Little Things
View Case Study: 79. Case: It’s the Little ThingsSupported Decision Making and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Freya Pedersen is a 23-year-old with a developmental disability. The surgeon is discussing an upcoming surgery with Freya and her parents. Freya tries to express herself, but it is hard to understand her speech. The surgeon is in a rush and just hands the consent…
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67. Case: What is Angela’s Choice?
View Case Study: 67. Case: What is Angela’s Choice?Angela Flores is a six year old with some minor developmental delays caused by traumatic birth. She has recently been diagnosed with a brain tumor and her prognosis is poor. The health care team is trying to determine goals of care and a develop treatment plan. Angela lives with and is cared for by her…
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66. Case: Blood Transfusions
View Case Study: 66. Case: Blood TransfusionsJoyce Skinner is a 38 year old woman with non-curative leukemia. She is the single mother of two children, ages 11 and 8, and her ex-husband is ‘out of the (parental) picture’. Since her leukemia diagnosis, Joyce has approached her progressive hematological cancer in an assertive manner, seeing it as her responsibility to fight to…
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65. Case: Conflict in an Ethics Consultation
View Case Study: 65. Case: Conflict in an Ethics ConsultationThe next three cases are from our Advanced Clinical Consultation Workshop facilitated by Paul Hutchinson, Imagined Spaces. These cases were submitted to us from Paul. I find it is often team conflict that can lead to an ethics consult and this will find its way into the consultation space. This can present in a couple…
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60. Case: Health Care Providers Under Quarantine
View Case Study: 60. Case: Health Care Providers Under QuarantineMy story starts in early April, during a routine day shift in our minor care area. A previously well middle-aged man, recently returned from Hong Kong, presented with fever. Because SARS was already recognized and we’d gone through the recent experience of a crash intubation with our first case at Vancouver General, this patient was…
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6. Case: To Feed or Not to Feed?
View Case Study: 6. Case: To Feed or Not to Feed?You receive a call on the ethics line about a patient’s relative (next-of-kin and legal decision-maker) force-feeding her sister who is a patient on the unit (pushing food into the patient’s mouth and then holding her mouth closed, pinching her nose, etc. until she swallows). Apparently, this was not an uncommon approach to getting her…
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5. Case: Caring for a “Difficult” Patient
View Case Study: 5. Case: Caring for a “Difficult” PatientA female patient in her mid-forties has been on the GI service for several months now due to severe Crohn’s Disease, which has left her with multiple draining abdominal fistuli. She has recently moved out of the province but her condition could not be treated adequately in the local hospital so she was transferred back…


