FORBES | As a transplant surgeon for years, we were forced to routinely make tough life and death decisions. With too few available donor hearts (limited supply) for the overwhelming number of patients waiting for a transplant (huge demand), allocation of the limited vital resource, the donor heart, left many to die within months while waiting for a heart transplant.
I’m no longer on the front line of that decision making, but today’s coronavirus pandemic similarly introduces the life and death decisions being made daily by our heroic health providers because of limited medical resources, whether it be too few ventilators or the lack of personal protective equipment for themselves.
It’s not the way it should be in American medicine today.
But because of inadequate preparation it’s the stark reality we have created for our nurses, and doctors, and caregivers, and support personnel as they fight and sacrifice on the frontlines for our safety and well-being. They are indeed our heroes.
A formidable surge in hospital admissions for COVID-19 patients is underway. Although communities across the country are successfully “flattening the curve” and spreading out the appearance of new cases across a longer span of time, it almost certainly will not be sufficient to prevent surges that will severely test clinical and hospital capacity. With 85,000 adult ICU beds available, even estimates of 960,000 to 3.8 million critically ill patients over the course of this pandemic would far outstrip our nation’s current capacity.
Read more at FORBES: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrist/2020/04/08/our-national-moment-how-we-can-put-our-healthcare-heroes-first/#6b6e9fcb68db