Spiritual, Moral and Ethical Dilemmata for Healthcare Professionals During Covid-19 Times
- PDF / 146,270 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 103 Downloads / 130 Views
EDITORIAL
Spiritual, Moral and Ethical Dilemmata for Healthcare Professionals During Covid-19 Times Santosh K. Chaturvedi
Received: 7 October 2020 / Accepted: 9 October 2020 Ó Springer Nature India Private Limited 2020
Ethical dilemmas and moral dilemmas have gripped the healthcare situations related to Covid-19. With almost all attention being focused on this pandemic, other health conditions are being ignored and neglected. Healthcare professionals in general, and medical doctors in particular, have to deal with such situations. Healthcare leaders, implying, governments, ministers, administrators and authorities have been focusing on covid-19 and the prevention of its spread by strict and repeated lockdowns, including curtailing or stopping routine healthcare provision to chronic medical disorders, immunisation, dental care, and all non-emergency medical care [1]. This has led to a unique experience among health care professionals, specially doctors and nurses, arising from their predicament. It is difficult to coin a term for such an experience which seems a mix of moral, ethical and spiritual distress and dilemmas. The Sanskrit word ‘kim kartavya vimuda’ describes this predicament of doctors—confusion about what their duty is and what they should do; save one life at the cost of losing another! [2] Is it their duty to follow the instructions or orders from their health leaders and systems or listen to the voice of their conscience? If they follow the directions from their health leaders,
S. K. Chaturvedi (&) National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India e-mail: [email protected]
they are consigned to live with the guilt of not doing their duty lifelong. The features of this phenomenon are characterised by the following in relation to healthcare delivery and related matters. These have been experienced and reported by many of our colleagues facing this predicament. The features are a sense of confusion about what is right and what is wrong, questioning about one’s duty and role in the situation, questioning one’s purpose in life and work, feelings of frustration, feeling demoralized and what is expected from them by the system, ruminations about the conflict and dilemma, helplessness about what to do, a lack of motivation, a sense of incompleteness of one’s existence, a sense of loss of meaning in the given circumstances, a sense of fatigue and burnout, indecisiveness and other experiences which are difficult to put in words. The ethical dilemma is the compromised autonomy of the healthcare worker, their inability to do what they think is right and justified medically. The principles of ‘do no harm’ and justice are also ignored as potential harm is done the majority of public suffering from common non communicable diseases like chronic mental illnesses, hypertension, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes mellitus, arthritis, mental, neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, and even palliative care for terminally ill cancer patients [3, 4]. In the pre covid times such patients w
Data Loading...
