Abstract
As clinicians and support personnel struggle with their responsibilities to treat during the current COVID-19 pandemic, several ethical issues have emerged. Will healthcare workers and support staff fulfill their duty to treat in the face of high risks? Will institutional and government leaders at all levels do the right things to help alleviate healthcare workers risks and fears? Will physicians be willing to make hard, resource-allocation decisions if they cannot first husband or improvise alternatives?With our healthcare facilities and governments unprepared for this inevitable disaster, front-line doctors, advanced providers, nurses, EMS, and support personnel struggle with acute shortages of equipment—both to treat patients and protect themselves. With their personal and possibly their family’s lives and health at risk, they must weigh the option of continuing to work or retreat to safety. This decision, made daily, is based on professional and personal values, how they perceive existing risks—including available protective measures, and their perception of the level and transparency of information they receive. Often, while clinicians get this information, support personnel do not, leading to absenteeism and deteriorating healthcare services. Leadership can use good risk communication (complete, widely transmitted, and transparent) to align healthcare workers’ risk perceptions with reality. They also can address the common problems healthcare workers must overcome to continue working (ie, risk mitigation techniques). Physicians, if they cannot sufficiently husband or improvise lifesaving resources, will have to face difficult triage decisions. Ideally, they will use a predetermined plan, probably based on the principles of Utilitarianism (maximizing the greatest good) and derived from professional and community input. Unfortunately, none of these plans is optimal.
Highlights
Disasters recur on a regular basis
Especially in those caused by disease, the public expects healthcare professionals to be on the front lines
I discuss how healthcare professionals weigh risk factors related to their response and the actions the healthcare community can take, including proper communication and mitigating responder concerns, to maximize and maintain our caregiver workforce
Summary
Emergency physicians exhibit courage when they assume personal risk to provide steadfast care for all emergency patients, including those who are agitated, violent, infectious, and the like.”[3] Despite these professional ethical codes, nothing— either morally or legally—compels a response to risk-prone situations. People decide which risks to accept or to avoid based on their own perceptions of the source and quality of the information they receive.[8,9] Quick, emotional impressions often precede and guide ‘‘rational’’ risk appraisals.[10] Provider and population perception of their risk from COVID-19 will probably not be congruent with reality In part, this will be due to the discordant messages from many senior politicians and other officials, and will be influenced by the realtime updates in scientific knowledge about the disease, its transmission, and possible protective measures. Risk communication (Figure 1) is “the exchange of real-time information, advice and opinions between experts and people facing threats to their health, economic or social well-being.” 13 Its purpose “is to enable people at risk to
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
