%0 Journal Article
%T COVID-19-Related Ethics Consultations at a Cancer Center in New York City: A Content Review of Ethics Consultations During the Early Stages of the Pandemic.
%A Friedman DN
%A Blackler L
%A Alici Y
%A Scharf AE
%A Chin M
%A Chawla S
%A James MC
%A Voigt LP
%J JCO Oncol Pract
%V 17
%N 3
%D Mar 2021
%M 32853121
%F 3.487
%R 10.1200/OP.20.00440
%X <B>UNASSIGNED: </B>The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has raised a variety of ethical dilemmas for health care providers. Limited data are available on how a patient's concomitant cancer diagnosis affected ethical concerns raised during the early stages of the pandemic.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>We performed a retrospective review of all COVID-related ethics consultations registered in a prospectively collected ethics database at a tertiary cancer center between March 14, 2020, and April 28, 2020. Primary and secondary ethical issues, as well as important contextual factors, were identified.<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>Twenty-six clinical ethics consultations were performed on 24 patients with cancer (58.3% male; median age, 65.5 years). The most common primary ethical issues were code status (n = 11), obligation to provide nonbeneficial treatment (n = 3), patient autonomy (n = 3), resource allocation (n = 3), and delivery of care wherein the risk to staff might outweigh the potential benefit to the patient (n = 3). An additional nine consultations raised concerns about staff safety in the context of likely nonbeneficial treatment as a secondary issue. Unique contextual issues identified included concerns about public safety for patients requesting discharge against medical advice (n = 3) and difficulties around decision making, especially with regard to code status because of an inability to reach surrogates (n = 3).<BR><B>UNASSIGNED: </B>During the early pandemic, the care of patients with cancer and COVID-19 spurred a number of ethics consultations, which were largely focused on code status. Most cases also raised concerns about staff safety in the context of limited benefit to patients, a highly unusual scenario at our institution that may have been triggered by critical supply shortages.