Short-term humanitarian medical volunteerism has grown significantly among both clinicians and trainees over the past several years. Increasingly, both volunteers and their respective institutions have faced important challenges in regard to medical ethics and professional codes that should not be overlooked. We explore these potential concerns and their risk factors in three categories: ethical responsibilities in patient care, professional responsibility to communities and populations, and institutional responsibilities towards trainees. We discuss factors increasing the risk of harm to patients and communities, (...) including inadequate preparation, the use of advanced technology and the translation of Western medicine, issues with clinical epidemiology and test utility, difficulties with the principles of justice and clinical justice, the lack of population-based medicine, sociopolitical effects of foreign aid, volunteer stress management, and need for sufficient trainee supervision. We review existing resources and offer suggestions for future skill-based training, organisational responsibilities, and ethical preparation. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen a significant increase in physicians participating in international short-term missions to regions with limited or no access to health care by virtue of natural disaster or lack of resources. Recent publications in the ethics literature have explored the potential of these missions for unintentional harm to the intended beneficiaries. Less has been discussed about how to respond when harm actually occurs. The authors review the ethical issues raised by short-term medical and humanitarian missions and the literature (...) on responding to unintended error to provide guidelines for avoiding harm to the intended beneficiaries of missions and an appropriate response when harm occurs. Two cases demonstrating an analysis and response to unintended harm are presented. (shrink)

Purpose To quantify how often physical therapists from high-income countries (HIC) travelling to low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) practise outside their scope of practice, in what circumstances, and their likelihood of doing the same in the future. Methods An exploratory descriptive study using a survey. Results One hundred and twenty-six licensed physical therapists from around the world participated. Physical therapists typically spent less than a month (73.8 per cent) in LMIC; 67.5 per cent believed that physical therapists practise outside of (...) their scope, and 31.7 per cent reported doing so. Reasons were believing that something is better than nothing (47.5 per cent ), a mismatch between the physical therapist’s and host’s expectations (40.0 per cent ), and preserving their relationship with the host (25.0 per cent ). It was deemed appropriate by 64.5 per cent to practise outside of their scope in some situations and 53.8% considered repeating the activity in the future. Half of the respondent’s first experience in LMIC occurred as a student or in their first decade of practice. Conclusions Working in LMIC requires a keen understanding of the risks and challenges associated with such experiences. To ensure best practice, a skill set that consists of critical self-reflection, systems thinking, and structural competency combined with clinical competency and accountability is imperative. (shrink)

Clinicians may increasingly find themselves practicing, by choice or necessity, in resource-poor or extreme environments. This often requires altering typical patterns of practice with a different set of medical and ethical considerations than are usually faced by clinicians practicing in hospitals in the United States and Europe. Practitioners may be required to alter their usual scope of practice or their standard ways of medically treating patients. Limited resources will also often place clinicians in the position of having to make decisions (...) about fairly allocating healthcare, which will alter the physician–patient relationship. This does not absolve physicians and other healthcare practitioners of providing the best quality of care that can be given under the circumstances. In addition, the lack of a well-developed healthcare infrastructure and limited resources will require working with established providers to determine the needs of the community, and what types of healthcare are feasible given these limitations. The essays in this issue of HEC Forum encourage readers to reflect on the unique ethical challenges faced in the extreme or austere environment. (shrink)