Mixed-methods study of ethical dilemmas in pediatric critical care

With the rising population of chronically critically ill and technology-dependent patients, pediatric critical care providers frequently face ethical dilemmas in the care of their patients. This mixed-methods study will collect qualitative data from focus groups of one institution’s pediatric critical care physicians and then utilize that data to construct a quantitative survey to be completed by pediatric critical care physicians across the United States of America with the aim of describing the scope of dilemmas these providers encounter, as well as describe the methods they utilize to resolve those dilemmas.