ABSTRACT
Background: Throughout the Pandemic caused by COVID-19, health professionals have faced the fight against this disease in the front line, even without effective treatment, this uncertainty led to the presentation of various ethical crises in health services to be analyzed. Methods: : An exploratory, cross-sectional investigation was developed, for which a self-application instrument was designed, in the online interview modality, aimed at doctors and university professors involved with bioethics with the purpose of analyzing ethical aspects in care of COVID-19 patients. Results: : 100 interviews were collected for the convenience of their work location, 67% worked in hospitals, 11% in clinics, and 22% in universities teaching the bioethics course. Problematic situations related to high exposure to risks of health professionals, infrastructure gap, ICU beds, and hospital beds were identified as problematic situations. The main conflicts and ethical dilemmas were related to decision-making for the allocation of resources, lack of culture of self-care for the health of the population, the risk of contagion from the doctor, therapies not supported by clinical trials, and patient-physician prioritization. Conclusions: : It was evidenced that university doctors and teachers identified various problematic situations, conflicts and ethical dilemmas in the care of COVID-19 patients, which compromise ethical values of maximization of benefits, equity, in addition to ethical principles such as beneficence, justice, reciprocity, solidarity, integrity, respect, vulnerability, dignity, damaging their human and legal rights.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the critical need for flexible mechanical engineering laboratories simultaneously deployable in multiple modalities: face-to-face, hybrid, and remote. A key element in the lesson portfolio of a forward-looking engineering instructor is economical, hands-on, accessible, 'turn-key' lab activities; kits that can be deployed both in brick-and-mortar teaching labs and mailed home to remote learners. The Energy Engineering Laboratory Module pedagogy, described elsewhere, provides an underpinning theoretical framework and examples to achieve these features. In addition, instructional lab kits must demonstrate foundational engineering phenomena while maintaining measurement accuracy and fidelity at reasonable cost. In the energy-thermal-fluid sciences, achieving these conditions presents challenges as kits require energy and matter transport and conversion in real time at scales large enough to reveal measurable phenomena but not so large as to become hazardous to users. This paper presents theoretical underpinning and experimental verification of a fluid mechanics lab experiment appropriate for undergraduate engineering students that 1) meets all the above-described criteria, 2) costs less than $30 in materials, and 3) can be easily mailed to remote learners.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
Covid-19 became a global health emergency when it threatened the catastrophic collapse of health systems as demand for health goods and services and their relative prices surged. Governments responded with lockdowns and increases in transfers. Empirical evidence shows that lockdowns and healthcare saturation contribute to explain the cross-country variation in GDP drops even after controlling for Covid-19 cases and mortality. We explain this output-pandemia tradeoff as resulting from a shock to subsistence health demand that is larger at higher capital utilization in a model with entrepreneurs and workers. The health system moves closer to saturation as the gap between supply and subsistence narrows, which worsens consumption and income inequality. An externality distorts utilization, because firms do not internalize that lower utilization relaxes healthcare saturation. The optimal policy response includes lockdowns and transfers to workers.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
COVID-19 became a global health emergency when it threatened the catastrophic collapse of health systems as demand for health goods and services and their relative prices surged. Governments responded with lockdowns and increases in transfers. Empirical evidence shows that lockdowns and healthcare saturation contribute to explain the cross-country variation in GDP drops even after controlling for COVID-19 cases and mortality. We explain this output-pandemia tradeoff as resulting from a shock to subsistence health demand that is larger at higher capital utilization in a model with entrepreneurs and workers. The health system moves closer to saturation as the gap between supply and subsistence narrows, which worsens consumption and income inequality. An externality distorts utilization, because firms do not internalize that lower utilization relaxes healthcare saturation. The optimal policy response includes lockdowns and transfers to workers. Quantitatively, strict lockdowns and large transfer hikes can be optimal and yield sizable welfare gains because they prevent a sharp rise in inequality. Welfare and output costs vary in response to small parameter changes or deviations from optimal policies. Weak lockdowns coupled with weak transfers programs are the worst alternative and yet are in line with what several emerging and least developed countries have implemented.