Self care, public health messaging and moral responsibilities during a global health emergency – a patient perspective

Blog by Noirin O’Neill As a patient and a person who has survived a life – threatening hemorrhaging form of leukemia in 2004 at 30 years of age, I care deeply about patient involvement, patient empowerment and self-care.  I know that self- care will help me as a patient to live better with my health […]

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Nursing and Post Pandemic Health Challenges

By Roberta Heale, Associate Editor EBN, @robertaheale @EBNursingBMJ This International Year of the Nurse and Midwife has tested us like never before.  Although the world has been waiting for a pandemic, and there have been scares (SARS, MERS, Ebola), here we are with COVID 19.  Nurses the world over have packed away their celebratory banners […]

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Ensuring personalised care for pregnant women during COVID-19

During a period of lockdown where many of our basic freedoms have been limited, the autonomy and safety of pregnant women can easily be overlooked. In a blogpost last week, Anna Nelson and Chloe Romanis discussed concerns raised about the availability of home birthing during the COVID-19 lockdown. I spoke with Sarah Noble, Head of […]

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Responding to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: Experiences of an ad hoc public health ethics consultation

By Verina Wild, Alena Buyx, Samia Hurst, Christian Munthe, Annette Rid, Daniel Strech, Alison Thompson. Clinical ethics consultations are a well established method to deal with ethically problematic situations in clinical care, even in emergency situations. But an emergency public health ethics consultation? This was unusual for most of us. Public health authorities in many […]

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Home-Birthing and Free-Birthing in the era of COVID-19

Anna Nelson and Elizabeth Chloe Romanis For many pregnant people[1] due to give birth soon there is considerable anxiety about how COVID-19 will impact birthing plans. Those who have planned for home-births are concerned that their plans will be jeopardised by the announcements from some NHS Trusts that they are suspending home-birthing services. Private home-birth […]

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Abortion and Covid-19: MPs should beware anti-abortion letters

Nathan Hodson, Elizabeth Chloe Romanis and Jordan Parsons Debate continues this week over whether abortion regulations in Great Britain should be adapted to ensure access for women during the Covid-19 crisis and resulting widespread self-isolation. We have reviewed an email circulated by anti-abortion activists immediately after laws were briefly relaxed (and the changes were revoked […]

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COVID-19 and Abortion Care Update: Department of Health and Social Care “Error”

Elizabeth Chloe Romanis, Jordan Parsons, and Nathan Hodson In an unprecedented move, yesterday the Department of Health and Social Care liberalised restrictions on abortion care in England only to revoke that decision hours later. This returned the legal position for abortion provision back to that stated in the approval order of the Secretary of State […]

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COVID-19 and abortion care: why we need remote access to reproductive health services

by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis and Jordan Parsons At the end of 2018 the Department of Health announced that in England, following measures implemented earlier in Scotland and Wales, it would become legal for pregnant women to take misoprostol, the second of the two abortion pills at home. Before this, women were required to attend an […]

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