Treatment, Care, and Ethics

ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the ethical challenges of treating and caring for Covid patients. Healthcare professionals are at risks to be infected by SARS-CoV-2, and in all countries illness and death has affected them as well as their families. The ethical discussion focuses on whether professionals have a duty to treat and to care, when there is substantial personal risk, particularly when sufficient protective equipment is not available. Ethical issues also exist for patients. They can experience various kinds of harm as a result of having contracted an infectious disease, and as the result of being in isolation during treatment in the healthcare facility. Patients with other diseases are harmed because modalities of treatment and care are cancelled or postponed since priority is given to Covid patients. A further ethical concern relates to the difficulty to maintain ordinary standards of care in conditions of emergency. Specific attention is subsequently given to ethical questions of research. The only way to improve the treatment of Covid patients is sustained research to test and develop medication. Intensive public debate has emerged on the subject of triage. If resources, especially in intensive care, are limited, which patients will be selected for treatment, and which criteria are ethically justified? The last paragraph of this chapter will focus on end-of-life care, and the need to provide palliative care to seriously ill Covid patients. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.