More on when push comes to shove
September 24, 2009
Public and Private Health Care, Freedom and Responsibility
February 25, 2010
More on when push comes to shove
September 24, 2009
Public and Private Health Care, Freedom and Responsibility
February 25, 2010
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A final word on pushing and shoving

The topic of secondary triage criteria and their applicability in a pandemic has aroused a great deal of debate in many different venues. At the Queensway-Carleton Hospital (QCH)in Ottawa we decided to try to take a formal look at the issue. We arranged a debate — in standard debate format, on the resolution: “Be it resolved that the QCH adopt societal criteria for the allocation of scarce medical resources in the event of a catastrophic pandemic”. The resolution was deliberately vague on what those “societal” criteria might be in order to generate as open a discussion as possible. The debate was impassioned, and the questions from the audience interested and interesting — but it is the result of the voting that is most noteworthy. The votes split 21 to 19 against the resolution, which I would say, is about as close to a tie as you can get. Our approach was unscientific, and of course the results were swayed by the approaches of the debaters,but that close a result, I think, means two things. First, we are split on this topic. There is not agreement that we unequivocably should — or should not introduce non-medical, or “societal” criteria into triage decision-making. And second — if we don’t have a clear agreement to change what we currently do — we should be cautious about taking a path that leads away from our currently espoused and practiced values.

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