On the ethical dilemma of Filipino healthcare professionals amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: An alternative perspective

@#BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to medical and non-medical issues. One of the subtler but equally important issues are the ethical ones. Most prominent among these is the ethical dilemma of health care professionals faced with the decision of whether or not they should continue working and serving the country despite the risks. OBJECTIVES: This paper intends to analyze the said bioethical dilemma by first, examining the ethical conundrum and defining its parameters; second, by assessing a previous attempt to arbitrate this issue and in the process, evaluating two different theories in ethics: egoism and Christian ethics; and third, by proposing a more nuanced normative ethical framework to fully understand the moral picture. METHODOLOGY: The paper employs the interpretive and analytical approach in philosophy and ethics, citing available literature, data, and sources to reinforce its arguments. RESULTS: The bioethical dilemma of healthcare professionals cannot be completely analyzed using the lens of egoism and Christian ethics as previously asserted by another scholar. A fuller understanding can be reached by using an Aristotelian normative framework as an anchor for analysis. CONCLUSION: All healthcare professionals want the good. While a dilemma may ensue because of conflict of values (e.g. for work and for safety), Aristotelian ethics subscribes to the need for hitting the mean between two extremes by honing one's practical wisdom and deliberation. Healthcare professionals exercise this faculty in confronting their dilemma.

On the ethical dilemma of Filipino healthcare professionals amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: An alternative perspective

@#The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to medical and non-medical issues. One of the subtler, but equally important issues are the ethical ones. Most prominent among these is the ethical dilemma of health care professionals faced with the decision of whether or not they should continue working and serving the country despite the risks. This paper intends to analyze the said bioethical dilemma by first, examining the ethical conundrum and defining its parameters; second, by assessing a previous attempt to arbitrate this issue and in the process, evaluating two different theories in ethics: egoism and Christian ethics; and third, by proposing a more nuanced normative ethical framework to fully understand the moral picture. In the end, the bioethical dilemma of healthcare professionals cannot be completely analyzed using the lens of egoism and Christian ethics as previously asserted by another scholar. A fuller understanding can be reached by using an Aristotelian normative framework as an anchor for analysis. All healthcare professionals want the good. While a dilemma may ensue because of conflict of values (e.g. for work and for safety), Aristotelian ethics subscribes to the need for hitting the mean between two extremes by honing one's practical wisdom and deliberation. Healthcare professionals exercise this faculty in confronting their dilemma.

En torno a la ética profesional del médico / Professional Ethics of Physicians

Se considera a Sócrates como el gran clásico de la moralidad, aunque no fuera el primero en procuparse por el hombre y la moral. Aristóteles creó la ética como ciencia autónoma y delimitó claramente sus dominios, sus métodos y su finalidad, formulando el concepto de "justo medio ". En la metodología aristotélica se encuentran rastros de Hipócrates, quien opinaba que el medico debe considerar siempre lo particular y que la determinación de las características individuales se da por medio de la sensibilidad. Una vez comprobadas tales peculiaridades, el médico debe atenerse al "justo medio". Los estoicos pudieron descubrir y elaborar gradualmente el concepto de ley natural. Al parecer, fueron los primeros en establecer la distinción clásica entre la moral teórica, la ideal, y la moral práctica, que está a la portada de todos. Se negaban a comparar la sabiduría, vuelta eteramente hacia sí misma, con el arte médica, que no constituye una finalidad en sí. Autores modernos aseveran que con el estoicismo nació lo que podría llamarse el humanismo del saber. Hoy en día se concibe que "la medicina es mucho más que un simple aprendizaje de datos científicos. Los que la ejercen deben ser dueños de una sabiduría aprendida al encararse con lo finito del hombre. De esta sabiduría van a necesitar los médicos para hacer frente a los problemas de la conservación de la salud en las próximas décadas ". Sería ésta la más grande hazaña cultural.

Sócrates is considered the great classic moralist, although he was not the first to take care of man and morality. Aristotele instituted ethics as an autonomous science and clearly defined its fields, its methods and its purposes, formulating the concept of "happy medium". In the Aristotelian methodology we find traces of Hippocrates, who belived that the physician must always consider the peculiar aspects and that the individual characteristics 'determinations can be reached by sensitivity. Once these particularities have been proved, the physician must relay on the "happy medium". Only Stoics could discover, and gradually elaborate, the concept of natural law. Apparently they were the first to establish the classic distinction between the theorical or ideal morality and the practical morality, which is accessible to all people. They refused to compare wisdom, entirely turned inward, with the medical art, which does not constitute an aim by itself. Modern authors assert that, with stoicism, the notion we can denominated wisdom's humanism rised. Today it is admitted that "medicine is more than simply learning medical data... Physicians must have a wisdom learned from human finitude. They will need this wisdom to tackle the health care policy debates in the nest decades ". This would be a major cultural undertaking.