Ethical Challenges to Respecting and Meeting Patients’ Requests: Lessons from Providing Palliative Care for Coronavirus Disease 2019 Patients.
However, as the world accepts the role of palliative care in managing COVID-19, it is important to assess the ethical challenges that the palliative care provision system as we know it today is facing given the new context.
Patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, and health systems can benefit from the extensive
knowledge of the palliative care community by urgently considering to improve
access to essential medicines, particularly opioids for the relief of breathlessness
and pain the two key symptoms that patients with COVID-19 faces and the palliative care fraternity are well-versed in managing.
COVID-19 has ravaged many parts of the world sparing no country or any sphere of life including economic, political
and social arenas. The most significant challenge has been in the medical field.
Clinical care is guided by the principles of medical practice; respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and
justice as popularized by Beauchamp and Childress.
Healthcare is provided within the doctor-patient relationship of
trust. To maintain this value of trust, the healthcare provider is
obligated to respect the patient’s autonomy and the inherent choices that they make.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, National Constitutions and Rights Charters across the
world detail the rights to access of highest quality of care, right to confidentiality, right to informed consent and the right to select the
healthcare provider of choice.10 However, COVID-19 has brought questions on how feasible these guidelines, policies and internationally accepted laws are.
Palliat Med Hosp Care Open J. 2021; 7(1): 1-3. doi: 10.17140/PMHCOJ-7-141
