When International Humanitarian or Medical Missions Go Wrong: An Ethical Analysis
- PDF / 545,535 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 66 Downloads / 152 Views
When International Humanitarian or Medical Missions Go Wrong: An Ethical Analysis David Zientek1 · Ric Bonnell2
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Recent decades have seen a significant increase in physicians participating in international short-term missions to regions with limited or no access to health care by virtue of natural disaster or lack of resources. Recent publications in the ethics literature have explored the potential of these missions for unintentional harm to the intended beneficiaries. Less has been discussed about how to respond when harm actually occurs. The authors review the ethical issues raised by short-term medical and humanitarian missions and the literature on responding to unintended error to provide guidelines for avoiding harm to the intended beneficiaries of missions and an appropriate response when harm occurs. Two cases demonstrating an analysis and response to unintended harm are presented. Keywords Short-term medical missions · Humanitarian missions · Ethics of shortterm medical missions · Unintended harm from medical missions Providing healthcare to at least some patients who lack access, either as a result of inadequate financial resources or living in geographic areas where care may be limited, has long been seen as a virtue in medical practice. Many pursue this virtue by providing care to unfunded patients in their local practice area. Until recently it has been less common to provide care on a significant scale to the poor in other countries where there are significant limitations in providers, resources, and technology. This pattern of practice has changed, however, over the past several decades as global health issues and global healthcare have increasingly been an area of focus both for private practitioners and academic medical centers. For example, between * David Zientek [email protected] Ric Bonnell [email protected] 1
Seton Heart Institute, and University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, 1301 W. 38th Street, Suite 405, Austin, TX 78705, USA
2
TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine, 3430 Camp Bowie Blvd., Fort Worth, TX 76107, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
HEC Forum
1984 and 2018, the percentage of medical students in the United States participating in a global health experience increased from 6% to over 25% (O’Neil 2006; Association of American Medical Colleges 2018). Many factors have contributed to a significant increase in healthcare professionals participating in short term medical missions to resource poor areas. There has been increased media attention to natural disasters and epidemics, increased attention in the medical literature to international healthcare disparities and the underlying structural issues contributing to these disparities, as well as increased awareness of the global impact of epidemic disease with the ease of travel to remote areas (Farmer 2005; O’Neil 2006; Battat et al. 2010; Langowski and Iltis 2011). Concomitantly, there has been an increase in academic programs encouraging medical trainees to gain experience in
Data Loading...
