Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Mar 9, 2025; 14(1): 97006
Published online Mar 9, 2025. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v14.i1.97006
Healthcare providers’ perspectives on factors influencing their critical care decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international pilot survey
Sonali Vadi, Neha Sanwalka, Pramod Thaker
Sonali Vadi, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Institute, Mumbai 400053, Mahārāshtra, India
Neha Sanwalka, Department of Statistics, HCJMRI, Jehangir Hospital, Pune 411001, Mahārāshtra, India
Pramod Thaker, Medical Ethics Fellowship, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02138, United States
Author contributions: Vadi S and Thaker P conceived the presented idea; Vadi S and Thaker P created the questionnaire; Sanwalka N performed the statistical analysis; Vadi S and Sanwalka N wrote the manuscript; Vadi S, Sanwalka N and Thaker P contributed to the final version of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: As this study did not collect information from patients and this was an anonymous and voluntary survey that was addressed to physicians, the study did not require approval by the Ethics Committee.
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was obtained via Google Forms before collecting data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no conflict-of-interest.
Data sharing statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Sonali Vadi, MD, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital and Medical Research Institute, Four Bungalows, Mumbai 400053, Mahārāshtra, India. sonalivadi@hotmail.com
Received: May 20, 2024
Revised: October 24, 2024
Accepted: November 19, 2024
Published online: March 9, 2025
Processing time: 205 Days and 3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Ethical principles guide healthcare practitioners (HCPs) in their everyday practice. However, in unstable situations such as pandemics, the principles of good decision-making can often conflict, leaving clinicians perplexed about the best course of action. HCPs faced ethical dilemmas involving duty of care, justice, and dignity. In the absence of evidence, clinical judgments were made using value-based approaches. The pandemic exposed gaps in health care availability, causing providers to experience high levels of stress and worry. It is important to view this as an opportunity to strengthen public health funding policies.