Journal Article

Covid‐19: Ethical Challenges for Nurses

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

2020

Overview

The Covid‐19 pandemic has highlighted many of the difficult ethical issues that health care professionals confront in caring for patients and families. The decisions such workers face on the front lines are fraught with uncertainty for all stakeholders. Our focus is on the implications for nurses, who are the largest global health care workforce but whose perspectives are not always fully considered. This essay discusses three overarching ethical issues that create a myriad of concerns and will likely affect nurses globally in unique ways: the safety of nurses, patients, colleagues, and families; the allocation of scarce resources; and the changing nature of nurses’ relationships with patients and families. We urge policy‐makers to ensure that nurses’ voices and perspectives are integrated into both local and global decision‐making so as to minimize the structural injustices many nurses have faced to date. Finally, we urge nurses to seek sources of support throughout this pandemic.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subject: allocation of scarce resources / Betacoronavirus / Clinical decision making / Coronavirus Infections - nursing / COVID-19 / Covid‐19 pandemic / crisis standards of care / Ethical dilemmas / Ethics / Ethics, Nursing / Families & family life / Global local relationship / Health care / Health Care Rationing - ethics / Health services / Humans / Medical decision making / Medical ethics / Medical personnel / moral distress / Morals / Nurse patient relationships / Nurse-Patient Relations - ethics / Nurses / nurse‐patient‐family relationship / Nursing care / nursing ethics / Pandemics / Patients / Pneumonia, Viral - nursing / Practitioner patient relationship / Resource allocation / Safety Management - ethics / safety of nurses / SARS-CoV-2 / Stress, Psychological - epidemiology / Uncertainty / Workforce