Ethics Consultation in COVID Times

Q:  What happens to clinical ethics consultation in a pandemic?A:  Ethics consultation continues, only more so.During the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, with a significantly lower overall inpatient census and fewer providers seeing outpatients, ethics consultation at the University of Kansas Health System (UKHS) increased rather than decreased. Not all of the increase is COVID related. Most consultations reflect issues that arise during normal times as well.Typical Issues, New PerspectivesSome consultation has been COVID specific, including participation on the UKHS Pandemic Triage Team assisting in preparation of guidelines for allocation of scarce resources under crisis standards of care. If hospital admissions exceed our critical care capacity, who gets an ICU bed? If there is just one ventilator available and two patients need ventilation support, who gets it and who is allowed to die? Or the shortage may be of personnel, or dialysis, or medications. Who decides and how? These are matters of ethics.Ethics consultation services, both at UKHS and the Center for Practical Bioethics, are always available. Always.Early in this pandemic situation, we responded to queries about a provider’s duty to care and ethically appropriate exceptions to the rule. Other consultation addressed the need to encourage advance care planning further upstream of arrival at the Emergency Department by patients in COVID-19 crisis. Decisions then may need to be made eme...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tags: Health Care bioethics covid 19 ethics consult syndicated Source Type: blogs