The framework below outlines three foundational ethical duties of health care institutions that can be enacted by leaders through policies, processes, and communication with their workforce: (1) the duty to plan for foreseeable situations with impact on patient care and institutional operations, (2) the duty to safeguard patient populations and the health care workforce, and (3) the duty of care, long understood as nonabandonment of patients.

How should the American bioethics community respond to the latest “crisis at the border,” focused on record numbers of unaccompanied minors – children and teenagers traveling from the Northern Triangle...