What the ‘moral distress’ of doctors tells us about eroding trust in health care

February 4, 2025

A female doctor sitting on a couch with her head back.

(The Conversation) – Bioethics, a modern academic field that helps resolve such fraught dilemmas, evolved in its early decades through debates over several landmark cases in the 1970s to the 1990s. The early cases helped establish the right of patients and their families to refuse treatments.

But some of the most ethically challenging cases, in both pediatric and adult medicine, now present the opposite dilemma: Doctors want to stop aggressive treatments, but families insist on continuing them. This situation can often lead to moral distress for doctors – especially at a time when trust in providers is falling. (Read More)