Professional duties and legal liability

Vaccine Mandates for Health Care Workers Raise Several Ethical Dilemmas, according to the author, a member of the Empire State Bioethics Consortium, August 2021

Allocating Ventilators During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Conscientious Objection, by Center faculty member Mark Wicclair, July 27, 2020

“We Signed Up for This!” — Student and Trainee Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic—a NEJM perspective piece reflecting on a survey of ~300 trainees, June 18, 2020

A Conversation about Providers’ Liability and Immunity for Providing COVID-19 Care with Diane Hoffman, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland, part of the Pandemic Policies & Practices series co-sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Public Health Training Center and the Center for Bioethics & Health Law, May 26, 2020

Ethics, Pandemics, and the Duty to Treat—a critical examination of the grounds claimed for asserting that healthcare workers have a duty to treat in the context of an infectious disease pandemic, by Heidi Malm, Thomas May, Leslie Francis, et al., 2008

Ethical Dimensions of COVID-19 for Frontline Staff—published by the Royal College of Physicians, this short document identifies issues such as physicians working outside their specialty and physicians over the age of 70 and/or with co-morbid conditions, as well as the need to have advance care planning with patients in light of the pandemic; the document will be updated with specialty-specific guidance and is available for download here

In a Pandemic, Do Doctors Still Have a Duty to Treat?—a New York Times opinion piece by Sandeep Jauhar, author of Heart: A History and Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

Doctors Need Room to Make the Wrenching Decisions They Face-- Robert Klitzman urges other states to join New York’s Gov. Cuomo who issues an executive order granting healthcare providers immunity from criminal and civil liability during this pandemic

Protect the Doctors and Nurses Who Are Protecting UsNew York Times opinion piece by Doug White, UPMC Endowed Chair for Ethics in Critical Care Medicine, with Harvard Law School professors Glenn Cohen and Andrew M. Crespo, April 2, 2020

Potential Legal Liability for Withdrawing or Withholding Ventilators During COVID-19Assessing the Risks and Identifying Needed Reforms by I. Glenn Cohen, Andrew M. Crespo, and Douglas B. White, JAMA, April 1, 2020