Covid‐19: Ethical Challenges for Nurses

Morley, Georgina; Grady, Christine; McCarthy, Joan; Ulrich, Connie M.

doi:10.1002/hast.1110

Cited by 228 publications

(257 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…However, the added roles nurses take on create ongoing ethical challenges in terms of their professional integrity and gives rise to moral distress. 17 …”

Section: Ethical Dilemmas In Nursingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-care strategies in response to nurses’ moral injury during COVID-19 pandemic

2020

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These are strange and unprecedented times in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most frontline healthcare professionals have never witnessed anything like this before. As a result, staff may experience numerous and continuous traumatic events, which in many instances, will negatively affect their psychological well-being. Particularly, nurses face extraordinary challenges in response to shifting protocols, triage, shortages of resources, and the astonishing numbers of patients who require care in expedited time constraints. As most healthcare workers are passionate nursing professionals, frustration and often a sense of powerlessness occur when they find themselves unable to provide needed care to their patients. The overwhelming number of deaths, patients isolated and dying alone, and the ever-present fear of being infected and then infecting colleagues, family, friends due to the lack of protective gear or known protocols takes its toll on emotional and psychological well-being. For nurses, the experience of this significant (hopefully once-in-a-lifetime) event can inflict on-going moral injury. Nurses affected by this trauma require education, coping tools, and therapy to help avoid or alleviate the adverse effects on their well-being. Institutions must provide these resources to tend to the well-being of their healthcare staff, during and beyond the pandemic. This article aims to investigate moral distress—considering it as a moral injury—and offer tools and recommendations to support healthcare nurses as they respond to this crisis and its aftermath.

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“…However, the added roles nurses take on create ongoing ethical challenges in terms of their professional integrity and gives rise to moral distress. 17 …”

Section: Ethical Dilemmas In Nursingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-care strategies in response to nurses’ moral injury during COVID-19 pandemic

2020

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“…Indeed there is an ethical concern about inadequate protection during the battle against COVID-19 that raised a question primarily on working hours. Though many nurses' conditions mainly made them vulnerable to COVID-19, nurses are trying to retain the balance between their interdependent responsibility of personal and professional commitments [14].…”

Section: Challenges For Nurses During Covid-19mentioning

confidence: 99%

Health Professionals Dynamic Role Amid COVID-19: Nursing Perspectives

Ramaiah

Tayyib

Alsolami

et al. 2020

JPRI

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A novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a newly discovered virus in 2019 in Wuhan, China. Globally around the world, healthcare professionals (HCP), including nurses, are the front line health workers (FHW), considered as a vital member of the team trying to save several people's lives. Although leading health organizations and scientific papers consistently addressed the HCP challenging role concerning multidisciplinary approaches and support systems, along with evidence-based research implications for delivering the best possible quality care, this review resulted in four primary categories, such as challenges, domains, support systems (code of ethics), and evidence-based synthesis of health policy. A step further, this article will detail the tremendous role of brave healthcare workers, including nurses and pharmacists who proved themselves as health warriors, along with the key issues about the nurses' perspectives on the impact of COVID-19, and to debunk the mixed messages what is being reported every day is a virtual drive for nurses focusing on the significant domains of nursing practices as a motivating factor amid COVID-19.

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“…According to The ICN Code of Ethics for Nurses (2012), the following are the main roles of nurses: ‘[…] to promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health and to alleviate suffering’ (p. 1). Nursing practice is directed by the obligation to care for the patient and to do what is in their best interests (Morley et al., 2020, p. 36). The manner in which expert care is delivered to patients and the decisions and actions that underpin this constitute the ‘ethical domain’ of nursing (Scott, 2017, p. 3).…”

Section: Principle Of Salvagementioning

confidence: 99%

The principle of salvage in the context of COVID‐19

Kearns

2020

Nursing Inquiry

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The prioritisation of scarce resources has a particular urgency within the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic crisis. This paper sets out a hypothetical case of Patient X (who is a nurse) and Patient Y (who is a non‐health care worker). They are both in need of a ventilator due to COVID‐19 with the same clinical situation and expected outcomes. However, there is only one ventilator available. In addressing the question of who should get priority, the proposal is made that the answer may lie in how the pandemic is metaphorically described using military terms. If nursing is understood to take place at the ‘frontline’ in the ‘battle’ against COVID‐19, a principle of military medical ethics—namely the principle of salvage—can offer guidance on how to prioritise access to a life‐saving resource in such a situation. This principle of salvage purports a moral direction to return wounded soldiers back to duty on the battlefield. Applying this principle to the hypothetical case, this paper proposes that Patient X (who is a nurse) should get priority of access to the ventilator so that he/she can return to the ‘frontline’ in the fight against COVID‐19.

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Covid‐19: Ethical Challenges for Nurses

Cited by 228 publications

References 13 publications

Self-care strategies in response to nurses’ moral injury during COVID-19 pandemic

Self-care strategies in response to nurses’ moral injury during COVID-19 pandemic

Health Professionals Dynamic Role Amid COVID-19: Nursing Perspectives

The principle of salvage in the context of COVID‐19

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