Pediatric Cardiologist Case Letter

My wife and I moved to Massachusetts, so our child could receive care at one of the best pediatric hospitals, Boston Children’s Hospital (Harder, B., & Comarow, 2018). I do not understand why the pediatric cardiologist is becoming increasingly concerned with us allowing our child to refuse blood products for his upcoming open-heart surgery to repair a congenital defect. The purpose of this letter is to inform the medical board of the physician’s obligation to preserve our religious beliefs while adhering to state law and the safe practice of medicine. In the United States we are entitled to our religious freedom. From our viewpoint, the refusal of blood products is a religious decision, not a medical one. We are Jehovah’s Witnesses and believe that blood should neither be removed from the body for donation nor should it be transfused into another person (Sagy, Jotkowitz, & Barski, 2017). If we force our child to receive blood products, we will deprive him of eternal life and will be expelled from the church (Lawson & Ralph, 2015). Refusal to …show more content…
Our 13-year old son is an active member of our religious community and fully understands the risks of refusing and receiving a blood transfusion. In fact, at the end of his first visit with the pediatric cardiologist, our son presented her with his advance directive outlining acceptable alternatives to a blood transfusion knowing that surgery was imminent (Ganjoo, Panday, Chawla, Tandon, & Sharma, 2011). The alternatives include crystalloids, colloids, recombinant erythropoietin (EPO), artificial blood substitutes, and intraoperative cell salvage. At that time, the physician did not seem to have any objections to our child’s decision and now threatening to refuse performing the life-saving