Covid-19 – Legal and Ethical Implications for Your Practice

Townsend, Ruth; Eburn, Michael

doi:10.33151/ajp.17.796

Cited by 5 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Seven were specific to the COVID-19 outbreak, seven were in relation to the SARS outbreak and four were written in reference to influenza outbreaks or potential epidemics. Only three papers specifically referred to responders (Mackler et al, 2007;Glauser, 2020;Townsend and Eburn, 2020), and 10 studies concerned hospital settings. Five papers were inclusive of all health professionals.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practitioner experiences in epidemics and pandemics in relation to COVID-19

Hogan

Williams²,

Rees

2020

International Paramedic Practice

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Background: COVID-19 has been declared an international emergency by the World Health Organization. Despite personal concerns, frontline health professionals, such as paramedics, nurses and doctors, continue to treat patients. Ensuring these workers' mental wellbeing is supported during these stressful times is key to their maintaining good mental health in the longer term. Aim: To conduct a review of the literature exploring practitioners' attitudes during a pandemic. Methods: A scoping literature review was conducted to assess information on health professionals' attitudes during COVID-19 and previous pandemics, and to identify their main concerns and whether these were addressed. PubMed, CINAHL, the Cochrane Library and Google Scholar were searched and PRISMA guidelines were followed. Titles and abstracts were screened and emergent themes were identified and discussed. Results: 141 articles were screened; 15 articles were sourced through Google Scholar and reference lists. There were 18 articles in the final sample. There was a lack of published data on COVID-19 at the time of writing. Themes include that health professionals' mental health may be affected during a pandemic. Their biggest concerns are infecting family members and overcoming personal anxieties to continue treating patients. Key themes in protecting staff mental health during a pandemic include increasing their understanding of how to protect themselves and their families, better confidence in personal protective equipment and good managerial communication. Conclusions: Practitioners experience heightened stress levels during pandemics, which may affect their mental health. This has implications for workforce resilience. More research is needed on frontline staff attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect their mental health.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practitioner experiences in epidemics and pandemics in relation to COVID-19

Hogan

Williams²,

Rees

2020

International Paramedic Practice

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“…A pictorial representation of preferences for resource allocation based on results of current study. (Rosenbaum, 2020), and with many medical professionals requesting guidance on how they should be making allocation decisions in such circumstances (Townsend & Eburn, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies such as this at least given them information about what the public favours. The doctors dealing with the COVID‐19 crisis have highlighted their discomfort and concern with the decisions they have had to make in the allocation of ventilators in northern Italy when capacity was overwhelmed (Rosenbaum, 2020), and with many medical professionals requesting guidance on how they should be making allocation decisions in such circumstances (Townsend & Eburn, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences for scarce medical resource allocation: Differences between experts and the general public and implications for the COVID‐19 pandemic

Grover

McClelland

Furnham

2020

British J Health Psychol

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This study concerns what lay people believe is the best way to allocate scarce medical resources. A sample of 515 individuals completed a short questionnaire asking them to rank-order eight different ethical positions with respect to the allocation of scarce resources. They showed a strong preference for the 'saves most lives' and 'sickest first' options, with 'reciprocity' and a 'lottery' being least favoured. There was a reasonable degree of unanimity amongst respondents and comparatively few correlations with individual difference factors such as demography. The preference results are compared to expert recommendations (Emanuel et al., 2020, N. Engl. J. Med., 382, 2049) made in light of the current coronavirus pandemic, and differences are highlighted. Implications for scare medical resource allocations are discussed, and limitations of the study acknowledged.

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“…The response decision may require shifting from providing all the patients the maximum number of available resources to allocating minimal resources necessary for an individual's survival. So that the additional resources are left out for others who may have an equal chance of a good outcome [24]. This is where governments and health care departments are obliged to guide and provide training to health care workers to handle difficult situations.…”

Section: Ethics In Outbreak Research and Clinical Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Ethics, pandemic and environment; looking at the future of low middle income countries

Tanveer

Khalil

Ali

2020

Int J Equity Health

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COVID-19 which started in Wuhan, China and swiftly expanded geographically worldwide, including to Low to Middle Income Countries (LMICs). This in turn raised numerous ethical concerns in preparedness, knowledge sharing, intellectual property rights, environmental health together with the serious constraints regarding readiness of health care systems in LMICs to respond to this enormous public health crisis. From the restrictions on public freedom and burgeoning socio-economic impacts to the rationing of scarce medical resources, the spread of COVID-19 is an extraordinary ethical dilemma for resource constrained nations with less developed health and research systems. In the current crisis, scientific knowledge and technology has an important role to play in effective response. Emergency preparedness is a shared responsibility of all countries with a moral obligation to support each other. This review discusses the ethical concerns regarding the national capacities and response strategies in LMICs to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the deep link between the environment and the increasing risk of pandemics.

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Covid-19 – Legal and Ethical Implications for Your Practice

Abstract: This short commentary aims to begin the discussion about the legal and ethical changes to paramedic practice that are likely to occur over the next six to twelve months in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Practitioner experiences in epidemics and pandemics in relation to COVID-19

Practitioner experiences in epidemics and pandemics in relation to COVID-19

Preferences for scarce medical resource allocation: Differences between experts and the general public and implications for the COVID‐19 pandemic

Ethics, pandemic and environment; looking at the future of low middle income countries

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