ArticleNursing ethics2024
Stretching oneself too thin and facing ethical challenges: Healthcare professionals' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in Nursing ethics, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundsMost countries are facing increased pressure on healthcare resources. A better understanding of how healthcare providers respond to new demands is relevant for future pandemics and other crises.
objectivesThis study aimed to explore what nurses and doctors in Norway reported as their main ethical challenges during two periods of the COVID-19 pandemic: February 2021 and February 2022. RESEARCH
designA longitudinal repeated cross-sectional study was conducted in the Western health region of Norway. The survey included an open-ended question about ethical challenges among doctors and nurses in hospital departments. Free-text comments were analysed using Systematic Text Condensation and also presented in a frequency table. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Ethical approval was granted by the Regional Research Ethics Committee in Western Norway (131,421). All participants provided consent when participating in the study.
resultsIn 2021, 249 and in 2022, 163 healthcare professionals responded to the open-ended question. Nurses and doctors reported three main categories of ethical challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) barriers that hindered them in acting as they ethically would have wanted to do; (2) priority-setting dilemmas linked to overtreatment, transfer of resources and ranking patient needs; and (3) workload expansion threatening work-life balance and employees' health. Category one comprised of resource barriers, regulatory barriers, system barriers, and personal barriers. Regulatory barriers, especially visitor restrictions for next-of-kin, were the most frequently reported in 2021. Resource barriers, related to the increased scarcity of qualified staff, were most frequently reported in 2022. Clinicians stretched themselves thin to avoid compromising on care, diagnostics, or treatment.
conclusionsDeveloping clinicians' ability to handle and cope with limited healthcare resources is necessary. To foster resilience and sustainability, healthcare leaders, in collaboration with their staff, should ensure fair priority-setting and initiate reflections among doctors and nurses on what it implies to provide 'good enough' care.
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