Department of Infectious Diseases, Austin Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
COVID-19 Screening Clinic, Austin Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Intern Med J. 2021 Sep;51(9):1513-1516. doi: 10.1111/imj.15471.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented disruptions to established models of healthcare and healthcare delivery, creating a host of new ethical challenges for healthcare institutions, their leadership and their staff. Hospitals and other large organisations have an obligation to understand and recognise the downstream effects that highly unusual situations and professionally demanding policy may have on workers tasked with its implementation, in order to institute risk-mitigation strategies and provide additional support where required. In our experience, targeted ethics-based forums that provide a non-confrontational platform to discuss and explore the ethical dilemmas that may have arisen have been well received, and can also serve as useful and immediate feedback mechanisms to managers and leadership. Using two case illustrations, this article examines some of the ethical challenges and dilemmas faced by these staff, based on discussions of shared experience during a clinical ethics forum for the Screening Clinic staff at Austin Health, Melbourne, Victoria.
COVID-19 大流行导致医疗保健和医疗服务的既定模式受到前所未有的干扰，给医疗机构、领导层及其员工带来了一系列新的伦理挑战。医院和其他大型组织有义务了解和认识到高度异常的情况和专业要求的政策可能对负责执行该政策的工作人员产生的下游影响，以便制定风险缓解策略，并在需要时提供额外支持。根据我们的经验，以目标为导向的基于伦理的论坛为讨论和探索可能出现的伦理困境提供了一个非对抗性的平台，受到了广泛欢迎，也可以作为对管理人员和领导层的有用且即时的反馈机制。本文通过对墨尔本奥斯汀健康筛查诊所工作人员临床伦理论坛上的经验进行讨论，使用两个案例说明，探讨了这些工作人员所面临的一些伦理挑战和困境。
