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The Ethics of Infection Control: Philosophical Frameworks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Charles S. Bryan ,
Theresa J. Call  and
Kevin C. Elliott
Charles S. Bryan*
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina
Theresa J. Call
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina
Kevin C. Elliott
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina
*
Two Medical Park, Suite 502, Columbia, SC 29203 ([email protected])
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Abstract

Recent developments that are relevant to the ethics of infection control include the patient safety movement, the appearance of new diseases (notably, severe acute respiratory syndrome) that pose threats to healthcare workers, data confirming the suspicion that infection control measures such as isolation may compromise patient care, and, in philosophy, renewed interest in virtue ethics and communitarianism. We review general ethical frameworks and relevant vocabulary for infection control practitioners and hospital epidemiologists. Frameworks for the ethics of infection control resemble those of public health more than those of clinical medicine but embrace elements of both. The optimum framework, we suggest, takes into account a virtue-based communitarianism. The virtue ethics movement stresses the need to consider not only rules and outcomes but also the character of the individual(s) involved. Communitarianism emphasizes the well-being and values of local communities, best determined by shared, democratic decision making among stakeholders. Brief discussions of 15 consecutive cases illustrate the extent to which the daily practice of infection control poses problems heavily freighted with ethical overtones.

Type
Review Article
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 28 , Issue 9 , September 2007 , pp. 1077 - 1084
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 2007

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