The Covid‐19 pandemic has highlighted many of the difficult ethical issues that health care professionals confront in caring for patients and families. The decisions such workers face on the front lines are fraught with uncertainty for all stakeholders. Our focus is on the implications for nurses, who are the largest global health care workforce but whose perspectives are not always fully considered. This essay discusses three overarching ethical issues that create a myriad of concerns and will likely affect nurses globally in unique ways: the safety of nurses, patients, colleagues, and families; the allocation of scarce resources; and the changing nature of nurses' relationships with patients and families. We urge policy‐makers to ensure that nurses' voices and perspectives are integrated into both local and global decision‐making so as to minimize the structural injustices many nurses have faced to date. Finally, we urge nurses to seek sources of support throughout this pandemic.

In caring for COVID-19 patients, nurses are likely to experience physical and psychological stress. Moreover, they are faced with ethical challenges concerning the allocation of resources with questions such as, Which patients should be prioritized? Who should receive ventilation? and How should decisions be made regarding the discontinuation of mechanical ventilation when this is not beneficial or, perhaps, when the ventilator is required by another patient?

During this pandemic, nurses also have to make the decision as to whether or not to be part of the team providing care to COVID-19 patients. They have to decide whether or not to leave their families to care for the sick, knowing that there is a risk of contracting the virus. Some of the decisions made by nurses at this time may result in moral distress, that is, they may feel they know the right thing to do but feel unable to do it for personal or professional reasons.

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Eliza Grace
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Journal of Clinical Research and Bioethics
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