Identification of Medical Child Abuse

Purpose: The diagnosis of Medical Child Abuse (MCA), formerly Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, has become increasingly prevalent in this era of modern medicine, most notably in tertiary and quaternary care centers. Clinicians in increasingly siloed, subspecialized referral settings are the most likely to encounter and thus consider rare or atypical diagnoses. In the pediatric physician-patient relationship, physicians are trained to trust a patient’s caretaker to provide an accurate history, opening the door for caregivers to abuse their own innate credibility as well as the practitioner’s trust to …