A blog post by an LML COVID-19 research team has been published in the British Medical Journal’s Journal of Medical Ethics.
‘Deciding who gets the ventilator: Will some lives be lost unlawfully?’ discusses the interplay between patients’ legal rights and medical resource allocation in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, it focuses on the allocation of ventilators; a resource in high demand.
The research group reviewed a variety of guidance documents proposing how patients should be prioritised for ventilation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Most guidance is underpinned by the ethical principle of saving the most lives, often taking the view that ventilator allocation should prioritise patients who are more likely to recover quickly. While saving the most lives possible is a worthy goal, this principle can violate patients’ legal rights.
The blog post posits that the aim should be to ‘save the most lives while respecting the legal rights of the patient’. Focusing on the withholding and withdrawal of ventilator support, the blog suggests that many of the recommendations circulated in recent weeks would be unlawful in practice, and many more could be unlawful depending on how they are implemented.
The full blog post is available here, and a further JME Current Controversy article will follow.