APRIL - 20238In My OpinionETHICAL CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF SCARCE RESOURCES: A CALL TO INVEST IN ETHICAL EXPERTISE IN YOUR INSTITUTION Dr. Douglas G. Merrill, MD, MBA, MA, FASA, Chief Medical Officer, St. Charles Health SystemByOn our daily rounds through the hospitals and clinics, enmeshed in a tri-demic of Covid, RSV, and Influenza, we are reminded of both the remarkable advances in care made possible by the developments in technology so often described in this newsletter and the potential shortage of those resources as our critically ill patient census explodes. Potentially insufficient supplies of ventilators, beds, IV pumps, monitors, and ECMO machines remind us of their integral role in modern healthcare as well as our utter dependence upon them to deliver the standard of care. So, in the pandemic era, now reaching its fourth year, healthcare systems have been required to plan for negative impacts on the standard of care they provide, caused by scarce technological resources, as well as shortages in staffing and facility capacity. When the day comes that you need a team to make the hardest triage decisions of all, in addition to wise and compassionate clinicians, you will be happy you planned ahead and can rely on the guidance of trained ethicistsDr. Douglas G. Merrill
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