• Clare Delany, Joanne Benhamu, Rosalind McDougall, Danielle Ko, Hayley Jones, Linda Mileshkin, Geraldine Largey, Alex Clinch, and Sarah Heynemann.
• Department of Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Intern Med J. 2021 Jul 1; 51 (7): 114311451143-1145.

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has placed an overwhelming burden on healthcare delivery globally. This paper examines how COVID-19 has affected cancer care clinicians' capacity to deliver cancer care in the Australian context. We use the lens of 'holding patients' (drawing from attachment theory, psychology and from Australian Indigenous knowledge) to conceptualise cancer clinicians' processes of care and therapeutic relationships with patients. These notions of 'holding' resonate with the deep responsibility cancer care clinicians feel towards their patients. They enrich ethical language beyond duties to benefit, avoid harm, respect patients' autonomy and provide just treatment. We consider the disruptive effects of COVID-19 on care delivery and on clinicians themselves. We then show how models of clinical ethics and other similar reflective discussion approaches are a relevant support mechanism to assist clinicians to process and make sense of COVID-19's disruptions to their professional ethical role of holding patients during and beyond the pandemic.© 2021 Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

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