COVID 19 Blog

An urgent question facing many NHS leaders in hospitals is, how do we meet the needs of non COVID-19 patients.

One such area is non COVID-19 cancer patients awaiting surgery?
How should one ethically prioritise these patients when resources (people, theatre space, ward and critical care beds, community help) are extremely limited.

A MORAL Balance Analysis can be viewed here.
My thanks to members of Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust’s Ethics of Clinical Practice Committee who helped identify additional facts and outcomes of relevance.

COVID-19 is the moral test of our generation.
I would see it as the biggest test since the Second World War.

It is testing us as a society – our health systems, our governments, our communities.

It is testing us as individuals.
My colleague Dr Harvey was concerned that many are failing the individual test.
This was his post on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/899475530/posts/10163357356595531/?d=n

Dale

In all the talk, emails, What’s App messages, 24 hours a day media frenzy, you might start to believe that COVID patients are the only patients.

The other patients are still there…
Hoping they won’t need medical attention – perhaps delaying too long.
Hoping they can still get the treatment they need (operations, medications, a lifesaving transplant).
Hoping they can leave hospital as soon as possible.

I have been posed or overheard three ethical dilemmas in the last 48 hours. In none of these scenarios does the patient/s have COVID-19 but all are affected by the pandemic.

We just need to remember that A,B,C comes before D.

A #

Ask – when you are struggling either with a patient or just coping emotionally – ask for help, talk to those whose opinions you value. There are people who want to help us. The medical students of Nottingham just emailed saying – “Need some assistances with childcare (or anything else!)… Hundreds of Nottingham Medical Students have expressed a wish to support you as much as possible whilst our placements and teaching have been postponed.”