The good, the bad and the ugly : pandemic priority decisions and triage

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ..

In this analysis we discuss the change in criteria for triage of patients during three different phases of a pandemic like COVID-19, seen from the critical care point of view. Availability of critical care beds has become a hot topic, and in many countries, we have seen a huge increase in the provision of temporary intensive care bed capacity. However, there is a limit where the hospitals may run out of resources to provide critical care, which is heavily dependent on trained staff, just-in-time supply chains for clinical consumables and drugs and advanced equipment. In the first (good) phase, we can still do clinical prioritisation and decision-making as usual, based on the need for intensive care and prognostication: what are the odds for a good result with regard to survival and quality of life. In the next (bad phase), the resources are mostly available, but the system is stressed by many patients arriving over a short time period and auxiliary beds in different places in the hospital being used. We may have to abandon admittance of patients with doubtful prognosis. In the last (ugly) phase, usual medical triage and priority setting may not be sufficient to decrease inflow and there may not be enough intensive care unit beds available. In this phase different criteria must be applied using a utilitarian approach for triage. We argue that this is an important transition where society, and not physicians, must provide guidance to support triage that is no longer based on medical priorities alone.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2020

Erschienen:

2020

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - year:2020

Enthalten in:

Journal of medical ethics - (2020) vom: 10. Juni

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Flaatten, Hans [VerfasserIn]
Van Heerden, Vernon [VerfasserIn]
Jung, Christian [VerfasserIn]
Beil, Michael [VerfasserIn]
Leaver, Susannah [VerfasserIn]
Rhodes, Andrew [VerfasserIn]
Guidet, Bertrand [VerfasserIn]
deLange, Dylan W [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Allocation of health care resources
Anaesthetics / anesthesiology
Clinical ethics
Epidemiology
Health care for specific diseases/groups
Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 27.02.2024

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status Publisher

doi:

10.1136/medethics-2020-106489

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM311020909