Changes in modern societies originate the perception that ethical behaviour is essential in organization’s practices especially in the way they deal with aspects such as human rights. These issues are usually under the umbrella of the concept of social responsibility. Recently the Report of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO on Social Responsibility and Health has addressed this concept of social responsibility in the context of health care delivery suggesting a new paradigm in hospital governance. The objective of this paper is to address the issue of corporate social responsibility in health care, namely in the hospital setting, emphasising the special governance arrangements of such complex organisations and to evaluate if new models of hospital management (entrepreneurism) will need robust mechanisms of corporate governance to fulfil its social responsiveness. The scope of this responsible behaviour requires hospitals to fulfil its social and market objectives, in accordance to the law and general ethical standards. Social responsibility includes aspects like abstention of harm to the environment or the protection of the interests of all the stakeholders enrolled in the deliverance of health care. In conclusion, adequate corporate governance and corporate strategy are the gold standard of social responsibility. In a competitive market hospital governance will be optimised if the organization culture is reframed to meet stakeholders’ demands for unequivocal assurances on ethical behaviour. Health care organizations should abide to this new governance approach that is to create organisation value through performance, conformance and responsibility.

Nurses working in palliative care are at risk of burnout. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory was used to determine burnout levels of nurses working in the Portuguese national network of palliative care. We evaluated the contribution of personal, work, and COVID-19 variables in three burnout subclasses: personal, work, and patient-related. A cross-sectional, exploratory, and quantitative design was employed and participants were sampled using convenience and snowball technique. An online survey was conducted and 153 nurses participated in our study. Socio-demographic characterization was conducted, levels of burnout and determinants were explored through multiple linear regression models for its three dimensions. High levels of personal, working, and patient burnout were present in 71 (46%), 68 (44%), and 33 nurses (22%), respectively. Most of them agreed that COVID-19 had an impact on their activities. Significant personal and work related burnout factors found were specialization in palliative care, self-perceived health status, unit type, weekly hours of work, and allocation to COVID-19 units. Gender was found to be a significant factor in patient-related burnout. There is a high level of burnout among nurses working in the Portuguese national network of palliative care. Measures for identification and mitigation of burnout are necessary to protect health care professionals.

Recent studies highlight the importance of digital surveillance to gather individual health information due to the global pandemic caused by the new COVID-19 disease. This paper analyses its legal and ethical implications at the interface between the individual right to privacy and the collective interests of public health. We framed the discussion in law, deontology and utilitarianism. The lasted theories and human rights, especially privacy, are crucial in our argument. Health-derived dilemmas and efforts to solve them, especially by information technologies, bioethics and law, exist at these perspectives' interface. In particular, we analysed the intersection between autonomy, the right to privacy, and the so-called ‘right to be forgotten’ in the public health context. In other words, we studied the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of health data - a radical means of control over personal data established in Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Given the lack of specifics regarding collection and re-use of such data under the broad scope of public health purposes, implied consent does not address the issue of proportionality. We highlight legal safeguards’ insufficiency, suggesting applying the ‘right to be forgotten’ according to an ethical interpretation.