Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
29th World Congress for Medical Law (WAML), İstanbul, Türkiye, 5 - 08 Ağustos 2025, ss.108-109, (Özet Bildiri)
Earthquakes cause many deaths, injuries, and severe damage. Since the resulting demand for healthcare services is far above the existing capacity, healthcare professionals face difficult situations that they would not face in their daily practice and experience many ethical problems simultaneously. This study aims to investigate the ethical issues faced by healthcare professionals during the first 10 days of the acute period of the February 6, 2023, Türkiye-Syria earthquakes. The research is a qualitative study conducted in May-June 2023. Indepth interviews were conducted with 21 healthcare professionals in three groups, 9 physicians, 7 administrative physicians, and 5 non-physician healthcare professionals (nurse, paramedic, ambulance driver) serving in the earthquake region. Participants were selected through purposeful and snowball sampling and interviewed via Zoom using semi-structured forms. Audio and video recordings were made during the interviews, which continued until saturation was reached in terms of repeated codes, and the audio recordings were converted to text by the researchers. The texts were manually coded by two researchers, and then the codes were standardized. Themes were created from common codes and thematic analysis of the data was performed. The study identified five main themes: “ethical problems,” “administrative problems,” “issues related to healthcare service delivery,” “accommodation problems,” and “negative emotions.” Under these themes, 19 codes and 61 sub-codes were identified. The main codes under the theme of ethical problems are ethical problems arising from the physician-patient relationship, resource allocation, avoidance of duty, discrimination, and violence. In the context of ethical problems arising from the physicianpatient relationship, sub-codes were triage, carelessness in medical decisions, performing too many amputations, working in an environment where corpses were present, medical decisions regarding children without parents or guardians, privacy, informed consent, and internal conflicts. In this study, it was determined that due to inadequate preparation for an earthquake, many ethical issues were intertwined with administrative and operational issues in the acute period, participants worked under extreme conditions, and experienced serious ethical problems and intense moral distress. Earthquakes not only cause humanitarian crises but also numerous complex ethical issues. Healthcare professionals should be given sensitivity and problem-solving skills regarding ethical issues in disaster situations. In particular, triage, duty of care, informed consent, resource allocation, privacy, and disadvantaged groups are prominent issues in this process. Ethical guidelines should be implemented regarding these issues.