Question

applied law and ethics question for health professionals

Hospital President Jose Vasquez, in a virtual online call with journalists, a recording of which was reviewed by Forbes, said the hospital has been given extra personnel from the state and federal governments but still has insufficient resources, and is "establishing an ethics committee as well as a triage committee that are going to be in charge of reviewing each one of these cases that need hospitalization." He said if a patient, particularly someone with a significant underlying medical condition, needs "mechanical ventilation to survive we have to start making a triage evaluation and [determine] who has a better chance to use in a beneficial way, all of the resources versus who is a patient that because of chronic medical illness does not have the chance to survive." Vasquez said some badly ill Covid-19 patients have been transferred to hospitals outside of the county, and in some cases outside of the state, a pattern he said is not sustainable and could lead to those patients who most certainly do not have any hope of improving going ...thousands of miles away dying alone in a hospital." Answer the following: 1. Based on this situation if you were Jose Vasquez - what would you do? What options are available that may alleviate the situation? In Chapter 8 we learned about life and death issues, would any of those help in this situation? If so, which ones and how would they help?

Answer 1

Some of the things which can be done in this situation are

• Recruiting new staffs who are experienced and highly skilled nurses to prevent any major loss if life in quality and quantity
• Provide immediate and on job training of the current staffs to handle the patient with a new infection of COVID 19
• Review on daily basis regarding the prognosis of each and every patient on unit basis from each department supervisors or in-charge .This can help to identify where the fault is.
• When it comes to life and death of a patient ensure that the triage is followed. It is equally important to save the lives in any cost because everyone has the rights to be treated in equity .