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Healthcare workers’ obligations

Society has invested in health care systems and health care providers so they can provide care when it is needed. A pandemic is an instance when care is most critically needed.

  • Professional obligations are based on a particular profession’s own understanding of how members of that profession should behave. WHO Ethics in Pandemic Flu
  • Governments, professional organizations, and health-care employers should ensure that healthcare workers receive adequate education and information about the risks associated with taking care of patients, measures they can take to protect themselves and expectations regarding their duty to provide care during a pandemic. WHO Ethics in Pandemic Flu
  • Professional colleges and associations should provide, by way of their codes of ethics, clear guidance to members in advance of a major communicable disease outbreak, such as pandemic flu. Existing mechanisms should be identified, or means should be developed, to inform college members as to expectations and obligations regarding the duty to provide care during a communicable disease outbreak. University of Toronto
  • Policies outlining health-care workers’ obligations should ensure that health-care workers are asked to assume risks only when their participation can reasonably be expected to make a difference to the consequences of the pandemic. WHO Ethics in Pandemic Flu
  • Policies outlining health-care workers’ obligations should seek to distribute risks among individuals and occupational categories in an equitable manner. WHO Ethics in Pandemic Flu
  • Policies outlining health-care workers’ obligations should recognize that the duty to work notwithstanding, risks to one’s own health is not unlimited. WHO Ethics in Pandemic Flu
  • It is important for health care professionals, from doctors to nurses to hospital and ambulance staff, to articulate codes or statements of ethical conduct in high-risk situations, so that everyone knows what to expect during times of communicable disease crises. University of Toronto

 



What is Pandemic Ethics?

A pandemic is pervasive in scope and touches virtually every human-made system. In this dashboard, we focus on ethics in a government’s or an employer’s actions in a pandemic.

Public health ethics addresses the relationship between those governing or administrating and the population or employees they serve. They are best summarized by the Public Health Code of Ethics of the American Public Health Association.

Contact Jim Thomas