Legal Immunity for Physicians During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Klitzman, Robert

doi:10.1016/j.chest.2020.06.007

Cited by 9 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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Section: Pre-covid-19 Approaches To Rationing Scarce Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…15 The triage committee structure alone does not prescribe the approach to decision making: the values and principles upon which the triage decisions are made must also be defined. 16,17 Many of these recommendations and guidelines introduce, as the main criterion for rationing, the probability that an individual patient will survive and benefit from ICU treatment. In effect, this amounts to an attempt to maximise the number of patient lives saved, an aim well established in emergency medicine triage models.…”

Section: Pre-covid-19 Approaches To Rationing Scarce Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previously established clinical scoring systems for outcome prediction are not sufficiently accurate and validated in COVID-19 to be used in this process. 16,31 It remains to be seen whether the 4C Deterioration model and the 4C Mortality Score might close this gap. 32,33 Guidelines incorporating emerging evidence for COVID-19 treatments are rapidly evolving, which makes comparisons across patient groups much more complex.…”

Section: Challenges Of the Covid-19 Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Allocating scarce intensive care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic: practical challenges to theoretical frameworks

Supady

Curtis

Abrams

et al. 2021

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine

106

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The COVID-19 pandemic strained health-care systems throughout the world. For some, available medical resources could not meet the increased demand and rationing was ultimately required. Hospitals and governments often sought to establish triage committees to assist with allocation decisions. However, for institutions operating under crisis standards of care (during times when standards of care must be substantially lowered in the setting of crisis), relying on these committees for rationing decisions was impractical-circumstances were changing too rapidly, occurring in too many diverse locations within hospitals, and the available information for decision making was notably scarce. Furthermore, a utilitarian approach to decision making based on an analysis of outcomes is problematic due to uncertainty regarding outcomes of different therapeutic options. We propose that triage committees could be involved in providing policies and guidance for clinicians to help ensure equity in the application of rationing under crisis standards of care. An approach guided by egalitarian principles, integrated with utilitarian principles, can support physicians at the bedside when they must ration scarce resources.

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Section: Pre-covid-19 Approaches To Rationing Scarce Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pre-covid-19 Approaches To Rationing Scarce Resourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges Of the Covid-19 Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Allocating scarce intensive care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic: practical challenges to theoretical frameworks

Supady

Curtis

Abrams

et al. 2021

The Lancet Respiratory Medicine

106

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show abstract

“…The risks are not limited to COVID-19 patients, the specific procedures for these patients having effects on non-COVID-19 patients, which can be questioned from the perspective of injury, respectively of liability. The need for interventions, in the sense of immunity introduction, is supported both by the estimate that at the end of the pandemic the pain of losing loved ones throughout this period and greed sometimes, will lead to a large number of lawsuits against health professionals (Oliva et al, 2020), as the fact that professional immunity (civil and criminal) has been introduced in many US states (Klitzman, 2020).…”

Section: Professional Immunitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Physicians Professional Immunity in the COVID-19 Pandemic. Problems and Solutions

Rotilă

2021

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In this article, by professional immunity we refer to limitation of liability to the specific pandemic context, respectively to the concrete possibilities of diagnosis, treatment, care and too few degrees of professional freedom still available. The relevance of one or another of the limitation measures of professional liability depends on the specific legal context of each community. Our thesis is that, regardless of the form of transposition into practice, a form of health professionals protection, such as professional immunity is necessary. From the multitude of possible protection measures, each state can select the appropriate ones. The need for specific measures for professional immunity is not identical in each state, depending on the specifics of the legal system, social values, measures characteristics taken to combat the pandemic, the degree of transparency of each healthcare system, the level of bioethical principles influence. However, this need doesn`t start from "no measure", the appropriate minimum level of protection seemingly to constitute a patient compensation no-fault model, plus the characteristics of the professional immunity, designed to adapt liability to specific conditions. The main problem in the absence of professional immunity is the risk of transferring the cost of ignorance, visible, in the inadequate expectations of medical science, on healthcare professionals, the limits of scientific knowledge risking to be reinterpreted as medical fault. The COVID-19 pandemic has somehow forced an additional step towards broadening discussions on universal human rights, being forced to consider ways of putting them into practice in the context of limited resources. Assuming that the increase in social complexity increases the risks of such events, we approach these problems from the perspective of creating rapid mechanisms to adapt to such changes, the lessons learned now being applied in the future to other similar cases.

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“…Importantly, the triage committees the authors cite as having been deployed in New York [3] were never actually put in place because of the controversy they generated and the difficulty meeting the conditions set out by the authors as a framework for resource allocation, speaking volumes about the complexity of the undertaking. In jurisdictions where they were attempted, they were met with controversy and lawsuits [4].…”

Section: Darryl Abrams Roberto Lorusso Jean-louis Vincent and Danimentioning

confidence: 99%

Procedural justice and egalitarian principles for rationing decisions in the COVID-19 crisis

2020

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Legal Immunity for Physicians During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

Allocating scarce intensive care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic: practical challenges to theoretical frameworks

Allocating scarce intensive care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic: practical challenges to theoretical frameworks

Physicians Professional Immunity in the COVID-19 Pandemic. Problems and Solutions

Procedural justice and egalitarian principles for rationing decisions in the COVID-19 crisis

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