Abstract
In every country, the burden of fighting the pandemic lies on the shoulders of healthcare professionals...
Highlights
S accept any risk, even the risk that can be avoided by proper administrative decisions, to act for the benefit of the patients? Can healthcare professionals be forced to risk their lives and lives of their family members in the situation when people and institutions responsible for work organization fail to fulfil their obligations and do not bear any consequences? It seems that such a force-based solution is difficult to accept both for physicians with many years of work experience and to those at the beginning of their professional career
One of the problems is the acceptance of the new risk, potential infection with SARS-CoV-2 at work, by healthcare professionals. This issue had been earlier discussed in the countries affected by SARS virus, which was a new danger for the medical staff
Writing about the lesson from the epidemic of SARS in 2003, Emanuel reaches to the core of medical ethics, that is the ethical obligation to act for the patient’s benefit, and emphasizes the need to make every healthcare professional aware of that obligation. He juxtaposes this bioethical challenge with the duties of the state institutions, the task of which is to organize healthcare in a way ensuring maximum protection of physicians and nurses at the frontline, and indicated the need to start a global debate on the topic with a view to possible epidemics in the future [1]
Summary
S accept any risk, even the risk that can be avoided by proper administrative decisions, to act for the benefit of the patients? Can healthcare professionals be forced ( by referring to the general rules of biomedical ethics, and by imposing penalties for refusal to exert their professional duties in the entities indicated by the state authorities) to risk their lives and lives of their family members in the situation when people and institutions responsible for work organization fail to fulfil their obligations and do not bear any consequences? It seems that such a force-based solution is difficult to accept both for physicians with many years of work experience and to those at the beginning of their professional career. One of the problems is the acceptance of the new risk, potential infection with SARS-CoV-2 at work, by healthcare professionals. This issue had been earlier discussed in the countries affected by SARS virus, which was a new danger for the medical staff.
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