ROLE OF DOCTOR IN PANDEMIC. WITE IN 350 WORDS
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Answer:
ExplaDuty of care, in the medical context, is often invoked as a sort of quasi-biblical commandment, akin to "do not lie" or "do not murder." In a document submitted to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Expert Panel Secretariat, Godkin and Markwell suggest that policy guidelines on the duty of care (which they term duty to care) should state that healthcare professionals' duty to care extends to a public health emergency in outbreak conditions (2). The authors however suggest that healthcare employers have a set of reciprocal responsibilities toward their staffs, which include duties to inform, protect, and support healthcare personnel. Singer et al., in an article on the ethical issues raised by SARS in Toronto, briefly discuss the duty to care before concluding that the 9 authors "could not reach consensus on the issue of duty of care, particularly regarding the extent to which healthcare workers are obligated to risk their lives in delivering clinical care" (3). The term "duty of care" (which I take to be synonymous with duty to care) is, at best, too vague and, at worst, ethically dangerous. For these reasons, the phrase should be modified in favor of more specific descriptions of the obligations of healthcare workers.Duty of care, in the medical context, is often invoked as a sort of quasi-biblical commandment, akin to "do not lie" or "do not murder." In a document submitted to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Expert Panel Secretariat, Godkin and Markwell suggest that policy guidelines on the duty of care (which they term duty to care) should state that healthcare professionals' duty to care extends to a public health emergency in outbreak conditions (2). The authors however suggest that healthcare employers have a set of reciprocal responsibilities toward their staffs, which include duties to inform, protect, and support healthcare personnel. Singer et al., in an article on the ethical issues raised by SARS in Toronto, briefly discuss the duty to care before concluding that the 9 authors "could not reach consensus on the issue of duty of care, particularly regarding the extent to which healthcare workers are obligated to risk their lives in delivering clinical care" (3). The term "duty of care" (which I take to be synonymous with duty to care) is, at best, too vague and, at worst, ethically dangerous. For these reasons, the phrase should be modified in favor of more specific descriptions of the obligations of healthcare workers.Duty of care, in the medical context, is often invoked as a sort of quasi-biblical commandment, akin to "do not lie" or "do not murder." In a document submitted to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Expert Panel Secretariat, Godkin and Markwell suggest that policy guidelines on the duty of care (which they term duty to care) should state that healthcare professionals' duty to care extends to a public health emergency in outbreak conditions (2). The authors however suggest that healthcare employers have a set of reciprocal responsibilities toward their staffs, which include duties to inform, protect, and support healthcare personnel. Singer et al., in an article on the ethical issues raised by SARS in Toronto, briefly discuss the duty to care before concluding that the 9 authors "could not reach consensus on the issue of duty of care, particularly regarding the extent to which healthcare workers are obligated to risk their lives in delivering clinical care" (3). The term "duty of care" (which I take to be synonymous with duty to care) is, at best, too vague and, at worst, ethically dangerous. For these reasons, the phrase should be modified in favor of more specific descriptions of the obligations of healthcare workers.nation:
Explanation:
It is a question being asked in hospitals across the country: What is the duty to treat in a viral pandemic, particularly one in which health workers are getting infected and there is a dearth of personal protective equipment?
The question could be glibly dismissed. Medicine is a humanitarian profession, the argument would go. Health care workers have a duty to care for the sick. By freely entering into the profession, we have implicitly agreed to accept the risks.
Medical societies have generally been supportive of this idealistic viewpoint. The ethics manual of the American College of Physicians, for example, states that “the ethical imperative for physicians to provide care” overrides “the risk to the treating physician, even during epidemics.” The American Medical Association asserts that “individual physicians have an obligation to provide urgent medical care during disasters,” emphasizing that this duty persists “even in the face of greater than usual risks to physicians’ own safety, health, or life.”
However, this argument seems to minimize the quandary my colleagues are facing as they try to balance their obligations as professionals with their duties as husbands, wives, parents and children. The risk to personal health from the coronavirus is alarming enough, but the risk of infecting our families because of exposure on the job is for some unacceptable. With the rates of infection among health workers so high — nearly 14 percent of confirmed cases in Spain, for example — the risk of transmission to our loved ones is not insignificant. How do we balance our professional and personal obligations?
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Limitations on professional duties are nothing new. Firefighters, for example, have a duty to rescue people from a burning building, but not when it is on the verge of collapse and certainly not without proper equipment. Can similar considerations be applied to health care workers?
The duty to treat during an epidemic is something of a modern idea. For most of human history, physicians often ran away in the face of widespread contagion. During the Antonine Plague of A.D. 165 to 180, none other than the venerable Galen, one of history’s most famous physicians, fled Rome. Such behavior was so common that in 1382, Venice passed a law forbidding doctors from taking flight in times of plague. The practice continued, however. During a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793, many distinguished physicians fled the city.
The American Medical Association addressed the issue in 1847 in its first Code of Medical Ethics. “When pestilence prevails," the code reads, it is the duty of physicians “to face the danger, and to continue their labors for the alleviation of suffering, even at the jeopardy of their own lives.” This rule was fortified in 1912, and yet during the 20th century, physicians adhered to it with varying degrees of fidelity. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, for example, doctors often refused to treat H.I.V.-infected patients.
In 1986, the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America were moved to issue a joint declaration that health care workers must provide care to their patients, “even at the risk of contracting a patient’s disease.” Even so, health workers abandoned patients during an Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995. And in a SARS outbreak in Toronto in 2003, in which nearly half the infected were health professionals, many health care workers refused to show up at their jobs.
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Judging from history, doctors and nurses might well rebel during this coronavirus pandemic if a shortage of face masks and other protective equipment persists. This would of course be a disaster. People are in urgent need of care. Without uniform adherence to professional obligations, the health care system — and society itself — could fall apart.
I don’t think it will happen. I believe health care workers will continue to make the sacrifices necessary to treat patients. However, it would be a mistake for people to assume that our professional obligations are unconditional. An unconditional obligation would absolve society of its own responsibilities. And there are many.
For instance, health care workers should not be forced to incur additional risk because people don’t want to practice social distancing (vacationers flocking to Florida beaches during spring break come to mind). We shouldn’t have to pay for shortsighted government policies that have already eviscerated our public health infrastructure and may soon lead to the premature relaxation of social distancing rules. please follow me