As COVID-19 stretches resources, ethical questions draw scrutiny; The Lewiston Tribune, April 8, 2020

Scott Jackson, The Lewiston Tribune; As COVID-19 stretches resources, ethical questions draw scrutiny

Two WSU professors discuss ethics of rationing health care resources during a pandemic

"WSU philosophy professor and ethicist William Kabasenche said when health care crises like the COVID-19 pandemic strike, health care workers must grapple with and reconcile two very different kinds of ethics.

The first of these, he said, is the familiar, day-to-day ethics doctors and nurses deploy on a regular basis. He called the first of these “clinical medical ethic,” which he described as more centered on individual patients. This mode of ethics respects patient autonomy, considers their health care goals and those of their family and generally seeks the best possible outcome on an individual basis.

However, in the event of a health care crisis like the pandemic facing the world today, he said another ethic begins to emerge that is more concerned with the collective well-being of many patients. He said if hospitals are overwhelmed with patients who require a ventilator, physicians may be faced with choosing to save a patient with better chances of survival over others in more severe condition...

Heine and Kabasenche agreed that forcing physicians to make decisions about who lives and who dies will likely be traumatic. What’s worse, Heine said because so little is known about the new coronavirus and the disease it causes, doctors will be making these decisions based on incomplete or flawed data. It’s difficult to make these calls in the first place, he said, but it’s especially difficult when you can’t even be sure that the information you’re acting on is correct and stands the best chance of saving the most people.

“Until we get a lot more experience, we’re going to have a hard time making really good decisions based on good data,” he said. “We will have medical challenges to make decisions and we will have very significant ethical challenges of how to make decisions to allocate resources during this pandemic.”

The full discussion between Kabasenche and Heine can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYy9-L0i1rk."