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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Avicenna J Med 2020; 10(03): 102-105
DOI: 10.4103/AJM.AJM_119_20
Review Article

Ethical dilemmas in the era of COVID-19

Hassan Chamsi-Pasha
Department of Cardiology, King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
,
Majed Chamsi-Pasha
Department of Medicine, International Medical Center, Jeddah, Saudi-Arabia
,
Mohammed A Albar
Department of Medical Ethics, International Medical Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
› Author Affiliations
Subject Editor: Financial support and sponsorship Nil.
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Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic placed an extraordinary demand on health systems and healthcare providers all over the world. The pandemic presented a number of unprecedented challenging ethical issues. Across the globe, hospitals are being challenged by a large number of patients presenting to the emergency room for treatment, creating scarcities of critical care resources, and uncovering the need for formal crisis standards of care. Difficult life and death decisions, which may create severe moral distress to the physicians, have to be made in emergency rooms and intensive care units. Other ethical issues, such as that related to conducting clinical trials during the pandemic, and the increase in domestic violence during the quarantine period, will be also discussed.

Keywords

Coronavirus disease 2019 - ethical challenges - medical ethics - scarce resources


Publication History

Article published online:
04 August 2021

© 2020. Syrian American Medical Society. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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