Who gets the ventilator? Important legal rights in a pandemic

At some point, during this pandemic or the next, all countries will need to answer hard questions about whether and when scarce ICU resources (such as ventilators, beds and staff) should be either withheld or withdrawn from certain groups of patients solely for the purpose of providing them to others.

In an article appearing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Kathleen Liddell, Jeffrey M. Skopek, Stephanie Palmer, Stevie Martin, Jennifer Anderson and Andrew Sagar identify ten ways in which the withholding or withdrawal of a clinically indicated ventilator might violate a patient’s rights, along with recommendations on how to avoid doing so.

Please see the full article here.