'Healthcare Heroes': problems with media focus on heroism from healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic
'Healthcare Heroes': problems with media focus on heroism from healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic
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DOI：
10.1136/medethics-2020-106398
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发表时间：
2020-08-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Cox, Caitriona L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cox, Caitriona L.
在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，媒体一再称赞医护人员的“英勇”工作。尽管这种感激之情无疑受到许多人的赞赏，但我们必须谨慎对待在此类讨论中过度使用“英雄”一词。卫生保健工作者目前面临的挑战比他们在正常工作中遇到的挑战要大得多，人们用英雄主义的语言来赞扬他们的行动是可以理解的。然而，这种语言可能会产生潜在的负面影响。在本文中，我将探讨什么是英雄主义，以及为什么它目前被应用于医护人员，然后概述与媒体目前使用的英雄主义叙事相关的一些问题。在COVID-19大流行期间，卫生保健工作者负有明确而有限的治疗义务，这可以建立在广泛的社会契约基础上，并与社会对卫生保健工作者的某些互惠义务密切相关。我认为英雄主义叙事可能是有害的，因为它扼杀了关于这种义务的局限性的有意义的讨论。它没有认识到互惠的重要性，并且通过其暗示所有医疗工作者都必须是英雄，它可能对工作者本身产生负面的心理影响。我的结论是，我们不应该用英雄主义的语言来赞美卫生保健工作者，而应该作为一个社会来审视卫生保健工作者在这场大流行中必须履行的职责，以及我们如何支持他们履行这些职责。
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the media have repeatedly praised healthcare workers for their 'heroic' work. Although this gratitude is undoubtedly appreciated by many, we must be cautious about overuse of the term 'hero' in such discussions. The challenges currently faced by healthcare workers are substantially greater than those encountered in their normal work, and it is understandable that the language of heroism has been evoked to praise them for their actions. Yet such language can have potentially negative consequences. Here, I examine what heroism is and why it is being applied to the healthcare workers currently, before outlining some of the problems associated with the heroism narrative currently being employed by the media. Healthcare workers have a clear and limited duty to treat during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be grounded in a broad social contract and is strongly associated with certain reciprocal duties that society has towards healthcare workers. I argue that the heroism narrative can be damaging, as it stifles meaningful discussion about what the limits of this duty to treat are. It fails to acknowledge the importance of reciprocity, and through its implication that all healthcare workers have to be heroic, it can have negative psychological effects on workers themselves. I conclude that rather than invoking the language of heroism to praise healthcare workers, we should examine, as a society, what duties healthcare workers have to work in this pandemic, and how we can support them in fulfilling these.