Hastings Center Report
Who Should Bear Witness at the Bedside?
Doctors and nurses often pass judgment on family members who don’t visit an unconscious or minimally conscious patient who may be suffering. But is bedside presence a moral obligation for families? This question is the topic of an article and three commentaries in the current issue of the Hastings Center Report.
- Hastings Center Fellow Jennifer Blumenthal-Barby and co-authors of the main article are skeptical that family members bear this ethical duty in general, yet they think a family’s bedside presence may be necessary in certain cases for surrogate decision-making. Read the article.
- A commentary by Hastings Associate Scholar Julia Kolak argues that although loved ones have no general duty to be at the bedside, surrogates may have narrower, role-specific duties to be present when their absence bears on whether the conditions for responsible surrogate decision-making are met. Read the commentary.
- Agreeing that there is not a blanket moral obligation for relatives to be present, the other commentaries encourage self-reflection on the part of clinicians in the face of family absence. Read one commentary by Joshua Hauser and the other by Patrick McCruden and Rachelle Barina.
