SCCM Resource Library-Plenary: The Role of Critical Care Professionals in Allocating Scarce Resources (Ake Grenvik Honorary Lecture)

Video Transcription

Video Summary

In this lecture, Dr. Douglas White discusses the role of critical care professionals in allocating scarce resources during a public health emergency. He highlights the ethical challenges that arise when there are not enough resources for all patients in need, and how this renders clinicians unable to fulfill their usual ethical obligations to individual patients. Dr. White outlines four important roles for critical care professionals to ethically respond to resource scarcity. First, he emphasizes the importance of advocating for and leading efforts to load balance across hospitals within a region, to ensure that patients in need are transferred to hospitals with available beds and resources. Second, he suggests advocating for state-wide triage guidelines that are developed through public reasoning, rather than ad hoc allocation decisions by individual clinicians or hospitals. This approach ensures fair distribution of resources and protects fundamental rights. Third, he highlights the need for critical care professionals to take on the burden of making allocation decisions separate from their clinical role, to promote consistency and minimize moral distress. And finally, he emphasizes the importance of advocating for individual patients within the constraints of the established allocation framework, to ensure appropriate application of the framework and to provide intensive symptom management and support. Dr. White concludes by emphasizing the importance of addressing health disparities and promoting equity in the allocation of scarce resources, and the need for continued education and engagement of critical care professionals and professional societies in these critical issues.

Asset Subtitle

Administration, Professional Development and Education, 2022

Asset Caption

Learning Objectives: -Discuss the ethical tensions that arise when there are not enough medical resources to treat all patients in need -Argue that clinicians have an important role in advocating for equitable and effective allocation strategies -Provide three recommendations for roles clinicians should, and should not, play in resource allocation

Meta Tag

Content Type Presentation

Knowledge Area Administration

Knowledge Area Professional Development and Education

Knowledge Level Foundational

Knowledge Level Intermediate

Knowledge Level Advanced

Membership Level Select

Tag Economics

Tag Healthcare Delivery

Year 2022

Keywords

critical care professionals

resource allocation

public health emergency

ethical challenges

advocacy

triage guidelines

load balancing

health disparities

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