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During a COVID-19 surge, ‘crisis standards of care’ involve excruciating choices and impossible ethical decisions for hospital staff

The Conversation

Dec 22, 2021
The Conversation intensive medical environment
Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH believes that by the end of December, our health system in Colorado could be 10% over capacity across all our hospitals, in both intensive care units and regular floors.  When hospitals are full, we are forced into making triage decisions but unlike last spring, the situation has changed.  Today our hospitals have plenty of ventilators, but not enough staff to run them. Stress and burnout are taking their toll.

Wynia explains, "Worse than all of this is anticipating the conversations with patients and their families.  These are what I dread the most, and in the last few weeks of 2021, we’ve had to start practicing them again.  How should we break the news to patients that the care they are getting isn’t what we’d like because we are overwhelmed?  Here’s what we might have to say:“ …there are just too many sick people coming to our hospital all at once, and we don’t have enough of what is needed to take care of all the patients the way we would like to… 
Read article>>  Republished in Salon>>

Center for Bioethics and Humanities

CU Anschutz

Fulginiti Pavilion for Bioethics and Humanities

13080 East 19th Avenue

Administrative Office Room 201

Aurora, CO 80045

303-724-3994

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