Table 2 Perceived ethical challenges reported

 • ‘Volunteering’ for deployment

 • Number of patients being treated/empty beds

 • Kinds of patients being treated – who should be regarded as a healthcare worker

 • Specific types of care for the patient where balancing risks to self against providing care were especially acute. Examples included:

   Use of the bowel management system

   Treatment of agitated patients

   Time spent in the red zone

   Comforting dying patients

 • End of life care and decisions

 • Managing and responding to differences in risk perception, between staff, over time and in response to critical incidents

 • Discharging of vulnerable patients

 • Request to give convalescent blood

 • Use of [the only] ventilator in the ‘red zone’

 • Separation of infected healthcare professionals from their infected

 • children (this treatment unit did not admit children)

 • Management and disposal of bodies

 • Use of cameras to monitor patients/staff

 • Maintaining staff morale

 • Evacuation decisions and differences in the kinds of patients who were evacuated

 • Using novel equipment

 • Transporting stage 3 patients over great distances

 • Uncertainty how best to treat patients (because optimal treatment for EVD unclear)

 • ‘Decompression’ on return

 • Implementing decisions from above, the rationale for which was not clear

 • Sharing of resources and facilities with NGOs

 • Not being able to use/keep up skills whilst on deployment

 • Persuading patients not take their own discharge