Franco Carnevale, RN, PhD

Associate member, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine and Advisor, Nursing

Hospital information

Academic appointments 

Professor, Ingram School of Nursing, McGill University 

Other appointments 

Chair, Pediatric Ethics Committee, MUHC 

Research

Research interests 

My research is primarily on pediatric ethics. I study ethical dilemmas in pediatric critical care in Canada, France and Italy, and moral distress in pediatrics, as well as ethical concerns regarding the care of children requiring assistive technologies (e.g., a ventilator) at home. My additional research interests include the experience of critically ill children and their families, pain and suffering in children and methodological issues in qualitative research.

We have developed an interdisciplinary research program on childhood ethics that brings together researchers from the health sciences, social sciences, childhood education and humanities. This program sensitizes health professionals to important ethical concerns regarding children and families with the aim of inspiring improvements in educational programs, policy development and clinical practice.

Research foci 
  • Pediatric ethics
  • Childhood disability
  • Qualitative research
Keywords 

Culture, pediatric critical care, ethics, nursing, pediatrics, qualitative research  

Selected publications 

Carnevale FA, Farrell C, Cremer R, Canoui P, Séguret S, Gaudreault J, de Bérail B, Lacroix J, Leclerc F, Hubert P. Struggling to do what is right for the child: Pediatric Life-Support Decisions among Physicians and Nurses in France and Quebec. Journal of Child Health Care 16(2):109-23, 2012.

Larcher V, Carnevale FA. Ethics. In: Goldman A, Hain R & Liben S, Oxford Textbook of Palliative Care for Children 2nd ed. (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 35-46, 2012.

Carnevale FA. Listening authentically to youthful voices: A conception of the moral agency of children. In: Storch JL, Rodney P, Starzomski S (ds.), Toward a moral horizon: Nursing ethics for leadership and practice (2nd ed). Pearson Education: Canada, 315-32, 2012.

Carnevale, F.A. A Conceptual and Moral Analysis of Suffering. Nursing Ethics, 16(2):174-83, 2009.

Carnevale FA, Campbell A, Collin-Vézina D, Macdonald ME. Interdisciplinary Studies of Childhood Ethics: Developing a New Field of Inquiry. Children & Society, DOI: 10.1111/chso.12063.