By Anna Nelson & Elizabeth Chloe Romanis During the COVID-19 pandemic pregnant and birthing people saw significant changes to the services they were offered. From March 2020 substantial restrictions were introduced in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus, with some notable examples including bans on partners attending scans, limitations on the number […]
Category: Medical ethics
Surgery in COVID-19 Crisis Conditions: Can We Protect Our Ethical Integrity Against the Odds?
By J Macleod, S Mezher and R Hasan Since the dawn of the COVID-19 crisis, drastic changes have swept across many organisations. Healthcare providers are particularly affected by this; which we have experienced first-hand working in cardiac surgery. Working in this constantly evolving situation inevitably leads to uncertainty, inconsistency and even fear despite the best […]
Can COVID-19 re-invigorate ethics?
By Louise Campbell The COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted ethics into the spotlight. Questions previously deliberated about by small numbers of people interested in or affected by particular issues are now being posed with an unprecedented urgency right across the public domain. One of the interesting facets of this development is the way in which the […]
Setting ourselves up for failure: a pandemic of our own making
By Ezio Di Nucci The COVID-19 pandemic is of our own making – but maybe not in the way you think. Let me explain why, taking Italy as case study. COVID-19 overwhelmingly kills vulnerable people, older or chronic multi-morbidity patients: the mean age of COVID-19 fatalities in Italy according to the most recent data was […]
What does good care look like in a pandemic? A Statement of Principles for Residential Care Settings
By Michael Dunn, Ann Gallagher and Nipa Chauhan With each day that passes, the COVID-19 pandemic is changing many of the things that we have taken for granted in our daily lives. Nowhere is this more evident than in residential settings – care homes and nursing homes – responsible for supporting, and providing care […]
COVID-19 and health workers’ rights in Africa: the duty to treat or not to treat?
By Adaeze Aniodoh “The public’s and the health workers’ concerns are not mutually exclusive; the goal is safety and fairness for all. Patients have a right to be protected. Health workers also have rights, and when infected they become patients.” Recently the world has come to shock as the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 ‘a […]
Oops! Mistakes and moral responsibility under COVID19
By Neil Pickering I’ve been pondering for some time about the use of the term ‘mistake’ to describe one’s actions, and this has been brought to the fore again by actions of government ministers during the COVID 19 pandemic. The BBC recently reported on the case of Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s chief medical officer. Calderwood […]
Rewarding through prioritization: The limits of reciprocal obligation in allocating scarce medical resources in the COVID-19 crisis
By Thibaud Haaser In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems are under severe strain. Some countries are currently experiencing, or may experience within a few weeks, shortages of medical resources (in particular intensive care beds and mechanical ventilation). In this context, the health community may have to make impossible choices regarding the allocation […]
COVID-19 and vaccine ethics: pre-empting conscientious objection
By Helen Watt The race is on to produce a COVID-19 vaccine: teams are working hard and fast across the world. We all long to see a vaccine in record time – but must, of course, have an eye to ethics too. Debates on vaccine ethics tend to focus on risks, whether to participants in […]
ICU triage: How many lives or whose lives?
By Angela Ballantyne Bioethicists around the world have been asked to advise on the goals and methods of triage protocols. Estimates suggest 5% of COVID19 cases will require ICU care. The key ethical tension is between utility and equity. There are other relevant principles of fair allocation such as reciprocity for frontline workers who have […]