Medical Ethics and Bioethics in Pediatric Dermatology

This chapter discusses the most important topics related to medical ethics and bioethics in pediatric dermatology. It helps the reader to understand the concepts of ethics and bioethics, learn about the peculiarities of informed consent for children, understand the off‐label use of medications in pediatric dermatology, comprehend the importance of the doctor‐patient relationship and the definition and value of an ethics committee. In application, bioethics can be complicated by the difficulty of coming to a consensus about which principles should be applied based on the specifics of the situation at hand. Despite these complexities, four principles of biomedical ethics have been outlined by Beachamp and Childress, which include beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and autonomy. These basic moral tenets provide the analytical platform to reflect on moral issues as they arise and to weigh them against one another while considering the scope of their application