Oral Presentations Abstracts: ETHICAL VALUES REASSESSED: RETHINKING THE COVID19 PANDEMIC FIRST TRIAGE GUIDELINES

Sabine HAUSER; Rouven PORZ; Maria ALUAȘ

doi:10.24193/subbbioethica.2021.spiss.54

Authors

Sabine HAUSER Doctoral Student, Medical Ethic Unit, Inselspital Bern, Insel Gruppe University Hospital Bern, Switzerland. E-mail: sabine.hauser@students.unibe.ch
Rouven PORZ Professor, Medical Ethic Unit, Inselspital Bern, Insel Gruppe University Hospital Bern, Switzerland
Maria ALUAȘ Associate Professor, Department of Oral Health, Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, Romania

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24193/subbbioethica.2021.spiss.54

Abstract

View of Volume 66, Special Issue, September 2021

In March 2020, many countries in commissions and medical societies moved very quickly to draft fair and transparent triage guidelines; this in order to plan ahead for possible resource bottlenecks in the treatment of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. There are a lot of consciously chosen (but also less reflected) ethical values in these guidelines. Our presentation compares the values of eight of such guidelines, but first shows how to read such values in the first place. Many health professionals are hardly aware of the explicit presentation of ethical-philosophical values.

From a methodological point of view, this presentation is based on a hermeneutic-ethical approach. The guidelines are interpreted, an interpretation aid is developed, and the values of the guidelines are reconsidered in comparison.

On a meta-level, we could identify different types of values, besides medical and ethical values, the guidelines were also filled with procedural, structural and legal-political values. On a content level, the unreflective handling of the value of autonomy, which often competes with the value of public health, is particularly evident. This competition is little reflected. Another point of divergence between the guidelines is the degree of precision or the difference between long-term and short-term medical prognosis.

We believe that with our analysis we can contribute to making value discussions in health care more open and explicit. We would like to present these conclusions for discussion at this year’s EACME conference in Cluj.