Various neonatal dilemmas attributed to neonatal resuscitation prevail in the healthcare sector. The situations arise when healthcare staffs together with parents face conflicting choices between courses of action while lacking proof for backing their ideal choice. Addressing the conflicts and uncertainties associated with the distinct courses of action serves as the major challenge when it comes to offering neonatal care. During the past decade, advancements in medical technology have resulted to surveillance of pre-term newborns below 28 gestation weeks. The recent years have witnessed increased surveillance of preterm newborns below 28 gestation weeks (Powell, et al., 2012) . In this case, preterm deliveries during such gestational ages pose various dilemmas for the parents and healthcare practitioners.
The primary dilemma attributed to neonatal resuscitation revolves around the issue of justice. In the healthcare setting, the care principle requires that providers offer treatment based on the infant’s best interest without laying emphasis on ethnicity, race, or the family’s capacity to pay. Nonetheless, in case providers lay major emphasis on the idea of distributive justice. Conflicts might emerge. For instance, distributive justice requires considering allocating healthcare in a socially just manner in a society. The resuscitation decision for pre-term infants might not have major influences toward the kid and during the long-term, but the entire society (Ambrósio, Sanudo, De Almeida, & Guinsburg, 2016) . The costs of caring for each infant born at 24 weeks are approximately $150,000, which leads to a countrywide estimate of around $100 million each year (Powell, et al., 2012) . This just considers medical costs without accounting for indirect costs attributed to housing, low wages, travel expenses, and means, which are around 4 percent of the overall hospital costs. The complications attributed to prematurity led to tremendous rise in overall costs for caring for neonatal infants. These kids might also be born with conditions, such as cerebral palsy, which costs around $920,000 to treat (Powell, et al., 2012) . Additionally, other issues, including use of speech, occupational, and physical therapies can lead the costs to rise by around $1,200 yearly (Powell, et al., 2012) . This way, the total costs for caring for pre-term born infants might devastate the family’s family condition while at the same time leading the countrywide healthcare costs to face major burdens.
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An additional ethical dilemma attributed to resuscitation of pre-term born infants relates to the responsibility of the healthcare provider in acting on the best interest of the patients. In the event of uncertain prognosis, challenges prevail when it comes to the certainty of care providers on their positions regarding whether they should resuscitate (Colic, et al., 2018) . Additionally, the parents might also obligate the care providers based on their infant’s best interests. In this vein, the decision becomes increasingly complicated particularly since it revolves around making choice between the infant’s life and death and in taking place in the context of an impending and unintended delivery (Ambrósio, Sanudo, De Almeida, & Guinsburg, 2016) . The period serves as an emotional time while the parents would only manage to emphasize on the idea that the decisions they are making might lead to the death of their infants.
The autonomy issue also arises whereby people have rights for making decision based on their individual medical care while the decisions should come when people are fully informed. Since the infants are incapable of acting in an autonomous manner, the parents serve as the surrogates making the medical decision for them. Unluckily, pre-term birth is usually evolving and unexpected making the capacity for fully informing parents almost impossible. Lack of full information by the parents means they would not adequately understand the outcomes of an intense premature birth (Colic, et al., 2018) . Overall, resuscitation of pre-term born infants presents dilemmas, which present challenges for the parents and care providers on whether to practice it.
References
Ambrósio, C. R., Sanudo, A., De Almeida, M. F., & Guinsburg, R. (2016). Initiation of resuscitation in the delivery room for extremely preterm infants: A profile of neonatal resuscitation instructors. Retrieved from http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1807-59322016000400210
Colic, A., Gverić-Ahmetašević, S., Gašparović, V. E., Jurica, S. A., Tumbri, J., Ribičić, R., . . . Borosak, J. (2018). Ethical dilemmas in delivery room and NICU. Retrieved from http://www.signavitae.com/2018/06/ethical-dilemmas-in-delivery-room-and-nicu/
Powell, T. L., Parker, L., Dedrick, C. F., Barrera, C. M., Di Salvo, D., Erdman, F., . . . Saunders, M. (2012). Decisions and dilemmas related to resuscitation of infants born on the verge of viability. Retrieved from https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/760750_4
