Ethical Issues when Dealing with Shortages

Ethical Issues when Dealing with Shortages
Ethics in healthcare are the basic standards that should be applied by healthcare workers while offering services. The moral code is an important reference source, especially when difficult to-resolve challenges arise. The ethical principles include beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, respect for autonomy, efficiency, health maximization, and proportionality (McDermott-Levy et al., 2018).
Challenges in healthcare, such as shortages, cause a strain on the existing resources. Shortages could be in healthcare personnel, pharmaceutical products, or infrastructure to support patients’ treatment. Healthcare workers should be fair and just to all patients when dealing with shortages. Patients who deserve urgent treatment should be prioritized to avoid loss of life. The article, for instance, describes how Seth Osborn quivered from the pain emanating from his lower abdomen (Deam, 2021). Although COVID patients were waiting in line, Seth’s case was urgent and required immediate medical attention. In such scenarios, the principle of justice guides the medics to prioritize severe cases, whether COVID related or not.
Dealing with shortages also calls for healthcare workers to ration care and prioritize patients with higher chances o...