“While working night shift and completing rounds as a Catholic nurse, I am frequently overcome by faith in the silent shadows. Nighttime nursing offers a special time for quiet realization of the value, dignity, and gift of each and every human life.” The NCBC’s DiAnn Ecret shares this special medication for Nurses’ Week 2020.
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Is it ethically justifiable for an experienced, licensed, and competent health care worker to withdraw from his or her duties of care during a pandemic such as the current COVID-19 global health crisis? Self-isolation will help protect health care workers and their families from exposure to a highly infectious, communicable contagion such as SARS-CoV-2; however, a health care worker’s absence may result in patients’ not receiving needed care. Ultimately, this decision is a prudential one, which requires an understanding of moral principles, valid ethical reasoning, and accurate medical knowledge.
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Triage protocols can be ethically appropriate when a genuine crisis situation arises, the demand for resources (e.g., space, staff, and equipment) surpasses availability, and other reasonable efforts to increase supply fail to meet the need. This resource is a summary of our full “Triage Protocol Guidelines.”
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Triage protocols can be ethically appropriate when a genuine crisis situation arises, the demand for resources (e.g., space, staff, and equipment) surpasses availability, and other reasonable efforts to increase supply fail to meet the need. They must be built on a proper, principled moral framework, such as this set of guidelines offered by the NCBC.
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The National Catholic Bioethics Center supports and encourages the rapid development of an effective, safe, and widely available vaccine to combat COVID-19. However, even a pandemic does not justify forgetting or violating the fundamental moral principles that guide ethical action: human life is sacred, and should never be exploited.
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Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, The National Catholic Bioethics Center has fielded numerous questions regarding COVID-19 triage protocols. We have reviewed a number of such protocols from both Catholic and secular sources; and while we do not question the need for appropriate policies or question the good motives of their authors, we do have concerns.
We offer this document to alert Catholic (and other) health care providers of elements within these protocols that may conflict with an institution’s mission and Catholic identity.
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Triage is an organized process of determining the priority of treating patients based on the severity of their condition. Closely linked to triage in times of crisis or during emergency events is rationing, the controlled allocation of medical equipment, services, or resources, including the time and attention of health care professionals. As the pandemic spreads in breadth and depth, people are beginning to call for programs of triage and rationing of health care. How should Catholic health care professionals and administrators address these issues?
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In a PowerPoint presentation produced during the SARS epidemic, Marie Hilliard offers notes on the willingness of health care professionals to care for patients in an epidemic, the problem of medical negligence, and the general duty of human beings to care for each other. She discusses various moral frameworks for decision making, rules of triage, and the challenge of rationing.
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NCBC senior fellow Marie Hilliard discusses the standards of care for health care workers during a pandemic. The article was written during the avian flu crisis of several years ago, but the moral reasoning remains unchanged. She also discusses philosophical underpinnings of the moral duty to care, triage, virtue, and heroism.
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We at The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) wish to convey to our many contacts, benefactors, and friends our continued resolve to serve as a trusted source of ethical counsel and information as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds globally.
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