In July, the FDA issued an advisory on a global shortage of Becton Dickenson's (BD) proprietary Bactec blood culture bottles -- which are essential in the case of suspected bloodstream infections.  BD does not expect the supply-chain crisis to be resolved until early next year.  This shortage and Its disparate impact offers lessons in resource sharing and medical ethics.  Without blood cultures, serious infections can be missed and patients may be over-exposed to overly broad antibiotics, raising the risk of antibiotic resistance and side effects.

Authors Anuj Mehta, MD, MS, and Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, are the co-chairs of the Medical Advisory Panel of the Mountain Plains Regional Disaster Health Response System, which recently issued guidelines on how to minimize the harms arising from this shortage. 
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Historically, an essential and ubiquitous component of physicians’ oaths and their related ethical codes is the promise to place patients’ interests above any others, including their own.  In this perspective, Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, and Patricia Gabow, MD, address the rising challenges that health providers face in fulfilling this core professional promise not from a virus but from 3 converging fronts: personal conscience, employment contracts, and laws.  The authors suggest that health providers need to work to recenter medical care around patients’ interests, which can be difficult or even dangerous, but it is the only path forward if physicians hope to remain a true profession.  Read article>>