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Impact of Parental Presence at the Ethics Meeting in Neonatal Intensive Care

NCT07681518 · Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 100

Last updated 2026-07-06

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

In neonatal intensive care, physicians are sometimes confronted with decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment for a critically ill newborn. In France, these decisions are made by the medical team through a formal collegial ("ethics") meeting. Parents are not legally required to take part in this meeting, and their participation remains very rare at the national level.

Since 2018, the neonatal intensive care unit of Hopital NOVO (Nord Ouest Val d'Oise) (Pontoise site) has systematically offered parents the possibility of attending the collegial ethics meeting concerning their child when withholding or withdrawal of treatment is being considered. This study aims to evaluate the value of parental presence at the ethics meeting in helping parents understand the medical decisions made for their newborn.

This is a retrospective, single-centre, non-interventional, qualitative study based on a questionnaire developed specifically for this purpose, in the absence of any validated tool. Parents of newborns for whom an ethics meeting was held between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2025 are invited to share their experience. Two questionnaire versions are used, one for parents who attended the meeting and one for parents who did not, allowing comparison between the two situations. The questionnaire explores parents' understanding of the decision, the emotional impact of the meeting, their sense of guilt and their acceptance of the decision.

Main hypothesis: parental participation in the ethics meeting promotes a better understanding of the medical decision, reduces feelings of guilt, and improves parents' long-term emotional experience.

Conditions

  • Parental Presence, Pediatric Ethics Consultation

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Hôpital NOVO

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Suzanne BORRHOMEE, Dr · Hôpital NOVO - Site Pontoise

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2026-07-01
Primary Completion
2026-11-01
Completion
2026-11-01

Countries

  • France

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07681518 on ClinicalTrials.gov