A Scoping Review of Ethical Considerations of Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination of Healthcare Workers

Constance Law; Tony Skapetis; Rohan Rodricks

doi:10.1007/s41649-022-00214-5

A Scoping Review of Ethical Considerations of Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination of Healthcare Workers

Asian Bioeth Rev. 2022 Aug 17;14(4):397-408. doi: 10.1007/s41649-022-00214-5. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Authors

Constance Law^{1

2}, Tony Skapetis^{1

2}, Rohan Rodricks^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ The University of Sydney School of Dentistry, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW Australia.
² Westmead Center of Oral Health, Western Sydney Local Health District, Westmead, NSW Australia.

Abstract

Duty of care is the core ethical responsibility of healthcare workers. Getting the workforce vaccinated will provide safety to the public, protect the vulnerable population and provide a safe working environment. While most agree that healthcare workers should be prioritised in the vaccination programme, mandatory vaccination remains a complicated and contentious issue with political, legal and ethical dimensions. This study aims to determine the ethical considerations associated with mandatory vaccinations among healthcare workers. A total of 152 abstracts were identified of which, 142 were excluded based on abstracts because they did not meet the inclusion criteria. The remaining ten articles were further evaluated with three articles that fit the inclusion criteria specifically discussing mandatory vaccination among healthcare workers and the ethical issues. Benefits, risks, effectiveness, equity and justice, autonomy, reciprocity and trust were used as a framework to discuss the ethical considerations which resonated both directly from the included papers, as well as more generally from the other literature associated with this search. There is limited literature on the topic of ethical considerations associated with COVID-19 mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers, as a systematic review identified only 3 papers. Benefits, risks, effectiveness, equity and justice, autonomy, reciprocity and trust were among the seven ethical considerations identified and discussed.

Keywords: COVID-19; Healthcare workers; Vaccination.

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