just three rounds of CPR before the person was pronounced dead — a significant reduction to the normal efforts aimed at keeping patients alive.
Rationing resources annd protecting staff. Doing CPR on a covid19 patient is a high risk activity for those involved. I would caution anyone on the outside from condemning healthcare workers/systems on these choices no one ever wanted to make if you aren't equally supporting mass public health interventions to prevent this situations.
Don't want this? Don't overrun the healthcare system. This is not an unlimited resource and the idea of having to make decisions none of us ever thought we'd make is not esoteric and academic.
she was called the ‘VIP’ patient, she was a doctor’s wife,” Rivers said. “They pulled out all the stops for that woman — there was nothing that they didn’t do for that woman. And guess what? She was the one patient that made it out of that ICU alive.”
Priority for critical workers must not be abused by prioritizing wealthy or famous persons or the politically powerful above first responders and medical staff — as has already happened for testing.37 Such abuses will undermine trust in the allocation framework.
While not specifically mentioned, this would likely fall into such wrong use of resources.
Or perhaps she never got to the CPR level and this is perception. We regularly mention staff family members on a floor because we have to work with their family members later. We reference VIP even if it doesn't change interventions. Beyond CPR (a risk to those performing for extended periods against a likely futile code regardless), indeed your critically ill COVID19 patients should be prioritized at the same rate as your non-COVID19 critically ill.