Now more than ever, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need the virtues and the insights that virtue ethics afford us. We have all read or heard the dilemma: there is a shortage of intensive care staff or beds so that triage must take place and doctors are placed in a terrible position. The older person with comorbidities, over against the younger previously fit person, is likely to lose out. The dilemma is described in terms of the tension between the duty to care for patients and the requirement that health care outcomes, at a population level, are maximized. The consequentialist (public health) argument wins rather than the deontological concern about the person in front of you. The upshot is that healthcare workers experience moral distress.
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Now more than ever, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we need the virtues and the insights that virtue ethics afford us. We have all read or heard the dilemma: there is a shortage of intensive care staff or beds so that triage must take place and doctors are placed in a terrible position. The older person with comorbidities, over against the younger previously fit person, is likely to lose out. The dilemma is described in terms of the tension between the duty to care for patients and the requirement that health care outcomes, at a population level, are maximized. The consequentialist (public health) argument wins rather than the deontological concern about the person in front of you. The upshot is that healthcare workers experience moral distress.