Journal article
An empirical bioethical examination of Norwegian and British doctors' views of responsibility and (de)prioritization in healthcare
- Abstract:
- In a world with limited resources, allocation of resources to certain individuals and conditions inevitably means fewer resources allocated to other individuals and conditions. Should a patient's personal responsibility be relevant to decisions regarding allocation? In this project we combine the normative and the descriptive, conducting an empirical bioethical examination of how both Norwegian and British doctors think about principles of responsibility in allocating scarce healthcare resources. A large proportion of doctors in both countries supported including responsibility for illness in prioritization decisions. This finding was more prominent in zero-sum scenarios where allocation to one patient means that another patient is denied treatment. There was most support for incorporating prospective responsibility (through patient contracts), and low support for integrating responsibility into co-payments (i.e. through requiring responsible patients to pay part of the costs of treatment). Finally, some behaviours were considered more appropriate grounds for deprioritization (smoking, alcohol, drug use)—potentially because of the certainty of impact and direct link to ill health. In zero-sum situations, prognosis also influenced prioritization (but did not outweigh responsibility). Ethical implications are discussed. We argue that the role that responsibility constructs appear to play in doctors' decisions indicates a needs for more nuanced—and clear—policy. Such policy should account for the distinctions we draw between responsibility-sensitive and prognostic justifications for deprioritization.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.5MB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/bioe.12925
Authors
+ Wellcome Trust
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/029chgv08
- Grant:
- 104848/Z/14/Z
- 203132/Z/16/Z
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Journal:
- Bioethics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 35
- Issue:
- 9
- Pages:
- 932-946
- Publication date:
- 2021-08-31
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-05-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1467-8519
- ISSN:
-
0269-9702
- Pmid:
-
34464476
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1195921
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1195921
- Deposit date:
-
2025-01-14
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Everett et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © 2021 The Authors. Bioethics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Notes:
- This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Wellcome Trust (Grant Nos WT104848 and WT203132). For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record