BETWEEN REASON, SCIENCE AND CULTURE: BIOMEDICAL DECISION-MAKING

Abstract

Over the last decade, we have extensively examined clinical practice in the context of sociocultural, religious and ethnic diversity. Stemming mainly from data collected amongst physicians we reflect, in this paper, upon the norms and values which guide decision-making processes in tertiary pediatric hospital contexts. Clinical ethics is portrayed a neutral guide between competing choices and obligations of hospital units, healthcare professionals, and families, when there is a conflict or divergence in the perspectives concerning the progression of the clinical trajectory. We will chart the sharing/non-sharing of different voices in critical decision-making pathways of maternal-child hospital care. How do “universal” ethical principles accommodate the diversity of perspectives anchored within the ensemble of cultural, social, and religious institutions? Similarly to the image of cosmopolitan urban communities, health care settings are defined by a multiplicity of values brought forth by families and health care professionals from diverse backgrounds. Attempting to seize these logics entails a better grasp of the delicate relationship between the individual and the collective, between personal values and instituted norms, between majorities and minorities.