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Chapter 32 - Ethical Dilemmas in Field Hospital Deployments

from Section 5 - Additional Contextual Considerations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

By
Ofer Merin ,
Avraham Steinberg  and
Dan Hanfling
Edited by
Elhanan Bar-On ,
Kobi Peleg  and
Yitshak Kreiss
Elhanan Bar-On
Affiliation:
The Israel Center for Disaster Medicine and Humanitarian Response, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
Kobi Peleg
Affiliation:
National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research, The Gertner Institute for Health Policy and Epidemiology and Tel-Aviv University, Disaster Medicine Department
Yitshak Kreiss
Affiliation:
Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel
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Summary

Disasters are inevitable. Health-care providers operating in disaster zones must make decisions that are unique and different from those encountered in their routine health-care work environment. Treatment decisions made under disaster conditions must reflect available resources. Clinical practice is mainly concerned with individuals while the focus of humanitarian aid is on populations. In the context of disasters with limited resources there might be a conflict between individual rights and community benefit. Teams operating in devastated zones should be aware that their health-care providers will become fully engaged with such dilemmas. Ethical issues should be identified, and individuals should be prepared to confront them. Preparedness to deal with these will allow: better medical care, higher ethical standards, and better accountability to patients. Awareness and identification of ethical issues will help health care personnel to alleviate some of the burden of confrontation with these expected issues. It is strongly recommended to organizations involved in humanitarian assistance to set clear international standards such as those by Sphere and the WHO and to train personnel to deal with these issues.

Keywords

Disastersethical dilemmaslimited resourcesaccountability
Type
Chapter
Information
Field Hospitals
A Comprehensive Guide to Preparation and Operation
 , pp. 304 - 312
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

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