ArticleNursing inquiry2021
The ethics of refusing to care for patients during the coronavirus pandemic: A Chinese perspective.
Article in Nursing inquiry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Barriers and Facilitators of Nurses' and Physicians' Willingness to Work during a Respiratory Disease Outbreak: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Perceived coercion amongst healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The impact of COVID-19 stress on nurses' organizational deviance: A moderated mediation model.PloS one · 2025Article
- Physician autonomy in crisis: examining the right to refuse commitment.The Libyan journal of medicine · 2024Article
- Pandemic lessons on essential healthcare services for the urban poor: a qualitative perspective of users and providers in Bangladesh.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Explaining ethical challenges and practical solutions from a nursing managements' perspective: A phenomenological study.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2024Article
- Global Nurse Involvement in ethical decision-making during pandemics: a concept analysis.Journal of research in nursing : JRN · 2023Article
- Front-line staff perspectives on a caring culture in Chinese hospitals: Validation of a Chinese version of the Culture of Care Barometer.Journal of nursing management · 2022Article
- The disaster resilience trajectory of the first batch front-line nurses at fighting the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Wuhan: A qualitative study.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
- Ethical problems among nurses during pandemics: A study from Turkey.Ethics, medicine, and public health · 2022Article
- The duty to care and nurses' well-being during a pandemic.Nursing ethics · 2022Article
- The Acceptability of Traditional Culture under the Background of Deep Learning.Computational intelligence and neuroscience · 2022Article
- Analysis of Traditional Cultural Acceptance Based on Deep Learning.Computational intelligence and neuroscience · 2022Article
- The ethics of refusing to care for patients during the coronavirus pandemic: A Chinese perspective.Nursing inquiry · 2021Article
- Ethical Challenges of Nurses in COVID-19 Pandemic: Integrative Review.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2021Review
- Heroes or cowards: healthcare workers' autonomy right versus patient care duties during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
As a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, health professionals are faced with situations they have not previously encountered and are being forced to make difficult ethical decisions. As the first group to experience challenges of caring for patients with coronavirus, Chinese nurses endure heartbreak and face stressful moral dilemmas. In this opinion piece, we examine three related critical questions: Whether society has the right to require health professionals to risk their lives caring for patients; whether health professionals have the right to refuse to care for patients during the coronavirus pandemic; and what obligations there are to protect health professionals? Value of care, community expectations, legal obligations, professional and codes of practice may compel health professionals to put themselves at risks in emergency situations. The bioethical principles of autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence, as well as public health ethics, guide nurses to justify their decisions as to whether they are entitled to refuse to treat COVID-19 patients during the pandemic. We hope that the open discussion would support the international society in addressing similar ethical challenges in their respective situations during this public health crisis.
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