First come, first served? Or key workers and politicians before everyone else? How can doctors decide who to treat in a healthcare emergency when there are not enough beds or ventilators to go around? Triage, the practice of working out who to care for first, has been around in medicine for centuries but the concept has acquired a fresh intensity during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was realistically feared the NHS might have significantly more patients sick with the virus than it had capacity. In this episode we discuss if it is ever right to pick between patients like this, and if so what methods might be wise – and which are ethically dubious.
In each episode of Matters of Life and Death, brought to you by Premier Unbelievable?, John Wyatt and his son Tim discuss issues in healthcare, ethics, technology, science, faith and more. John is a doctor, professor of ethics, and writer and speaker on many of these topics, while Tim is a religion and social affairs journalist. We talk about how Christians can better engage with a particular question of life, death or something else in between.
First come, first served? Or key workers and politicians before everyone else? How can doctors decide who to treat in a healthcare emergency when there are not enough beds or ventilators to go around? Triage, the practice of working out who to care for first, has been around in medicine for centuries but the concept has acquired a fresh intensity during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was realistically feared the NHS might have significantly more patients sick with the virus than it had capacity. In this episode we discuss if it is ever right to pick between patients like this, and if so what methods might be wise – and which are ethically dubious.
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
