Discussion

Health care providers usually face many ethical issues as they provide care for patients in times of disaster. Code of ethics is ambiguous for most medical care professionals as they address their duties of providing health care during disaster times. Healthcare professionals are exposed to the risk of contracting communicable diseases as they provide care to those afflicted during disasters. Since time immemorial, medical care practitioners have placed themselves in this danger on the battlefield and even as they research for the cure and vaccines of various infectious diseases (O’Mathúna, Gordijn & Clarke, 2014). While healthcare providers have placed themselves at the risks of safe the well-being of their patients before safeguarding theirs, this poses a huge medical dilemma.

Some healthcare professionals have ethics in providing guidance when making these decisions. American Medical Association tries to address the ethical dilemma that exists among healthcare professionals as they issue care by adopting ethics policies that aim at addressing the obligations of a physician during health care emergencies (Geale, 2012). This is known as virtue ethics. Because of their duty and responsibility to take care of the patients who are injured, physicians are obliged to provide urgent medical care during disasters. The ethical duty holds in a face that is greater than the risks of their own safety (Leider et al., 2017). However, when participating in the disaster responses, their duty is not unlimited; therefore, the physicians should balance the immediate benefits that they give to patients with their ability to take care of more patients in the future (Nicholson & Kurucz, 2019). This type of ethics is known as the ethics of care.

pur-new-sol

Related Questions