Pandemic influenza are we prepared to face our obligations 英文参考文献.docVIP

Available online /content/12/4/165 Commentary Pandemic influenza: are we prepared to face our obligations? Boris P Ehrenstein Department of Internal Medicine (I), University Hospital, Regensburg, Germany Corresponding author: Boris P Ehrenstein, boris.ehrenstein@klinik.uni-r.de Published: 15 July 2008 Critical Care 2008, 12:165 (doi:10.1186/cc6938) This article is online at /content/12/4/165 ? 2008 BioMed Central Ltd See related review by Anantham et al., /content/12/3/217 Abstract duties; they could therefore undermine institutional and societal preparations [4-8]. Hence, a reappraisal of the ethical basis of our professional duties as physicians and of justifiable or nonjustifiable limits to these duties should be an integral part of pandemic preparedness efforts, not only for professional organizations and health authorities, but also for individual physicians. After decades of low personal risk for contracting lethal diseases, physicians are suddenly facing the possibility of a substantial increase in occupational risk during an influenza pandemic. If they are not confronted before the onset of an influenza pandemic, feelings of unease and fear or ignorance about physicians’ profes- sional obligations could profoundly hinder individual physicians in fulfilling their professional duties. Such feelings could therefore undermine institutional and societal preparations. In their review published in Critical Care, Anantham and coworkers outline the In their review, Anantham and coworkers [1] provide ethical obligations of physicians who respond to health care emergencies, such as an influenza pandemic. framework that forms the basis of the professional explanations of the basic principles of ‘the rule of rescue’, the ‘free choice of the profession’ and the implicit ‘contract of the medical profession with society’, which help us to understand the inevita