Triage in the Time of Pandemic: The Sanctity of Saving as Many Lives as Possible

The vast majority of them are involved in clinical care, where the object is to do the most you can for the welfare of the patient in front of you. [...] Although saving people from poverty and captivity may indeed have involved saving lives, the situations our ancestors faced were not usually as overwhelming in the numbers of people in need or in the immediacy of the possibility of death as in the situation that we are now facing in the COVID-19 pandemic. [...] To assert that whoever happened to be put on the ventilator first should remain on it even when the chances of saving that person to the point of eligibility for discharge from the hospital are slim to nonexistent and the chances of saving someone else to that point are much better seems to me to be ignoring the medical realities of the cases we are considering, the shortages that are unfortunate. [...] In the meantime, it is incumbent on all of us to follow the instructions of civil health care authorities to practice social distancing as much as possible in order to stop the spread of the virus. [...] If the triage officer determines that a patient cannot be saved, and that their medical resources must be reallocated to another patient in urgent need, the basis for this decision must be explained fully and sensitively to the patient or their representative, and the hospital must continue to support the patient with appropriate palliative and pastoral care, maintaining the respect and dignity of.