Advanced cancer and COVID-19 comorbidity: medical oncology-palliative medicine ethics meetings in a comprehensive cancer centre

OBJECTIVES: In managing patients with cancer in the COVID-19 era, clinical oncologists and palliative care practitioners had to face new, disrupting and complex medical situations, challenging the quality of the shared decision-making process. During the first lockdown in France, we developed an onco-palliative ethics meeting to enhance the quality of the decision-making process for patients with advanced cancer treated for COVID-19. METHODS: A least one of the institutional ethics committee members was present along with oncologists, palliative care teams, psycho-oncologists, radiologists and intensive care specialists. Specific medical parameters were systematically collected to form a standardised framework for the discussions. RESULTS: The main raised issues were the definition of new criteria for the implementation of invasive resuscitation techniques, optimal ways to adapt or delay anticancer treatment and best procedures to address terminal respiratory failure and end-of-life care. The main clinical and ethical guidelines that emerged during these debates are presented. The palliative care team played a major role in assessing and reporting patients’ awareness of cancer-related prognosis and their wishes concerning invasive therapies or transfer to intensive care units, enabling an individualised benefit–risk balance assessment. The ethics committee members ensured continuous monitoring during the discussions. Their function was to recall the main ethical principles including dignity, which is conferred on people when there are treated as having equal status. CONCLUSIONS: The onco-palliative ethics meeting provided a powerful avenue for improvement of collegiality and reinforcement of teamwork, which could be a major protection against burnout for healthcare professionals facing an epidemic onslaught.