Visitor restrictions in hospitals during infectious disease outbreaks: An ethical approach to policy development and requests for exemptions
In this paper, we explore the ethics of restricting visitation to hospitals during an infectious disease outbreak. We aim to answer three questions: What are the features of an ethically justified hospital visitor restriction policy? Should policies include scope for case-by-case exemptions? How sho...
| Auteurs: | ; ; ; ; ; |
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2023
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| Dans: |
Bioethics
Année: 2023, Volume: 37, Numéro: 7, Pages: 715-724 |
| RelBib Classification: | NCH Éthique médicale TK Époque contemporaine XA Droit |
| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
Policy
B Covid B infectious disease B visitor restrictions B Organizational Ethics B clinical ethics |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Résumé: | In this paper, we explore the ethics of restricting visitation to hospitals during an infectious disease outbreak. We aim to answer three questions: What are the features of an ethically justified hospital visitor restriction policy? Should policies include scope for case-by-case exemptions? How should decisions about exemptions be made? Based on a critical interpretive review of the existing ethical literature on visitor restrictions, we argue that an ethically justified hospital visitor restriction policy has the following features: proportionality, comprehensiveness, harm mitigation, exemptions for specific patient populations, visitation decisions made separately from a patient's treating clinicians, transparency, and consistency in application. We also argue that an ethical policy ought to include scope for case-by-case exemptions for individual patients. We propose a process for ethical decision-making that provides a shared language and structure to decrease the risks and burdens of decision-making when clinicians or managers are considering requests for exemptions. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-8519 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Bioethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13188 |