Title slide of "Triage Ethics During a Pandemic" webinar
By bschin - April 22, 2020

On March 25, 2020, the Center for Christian Bioethics held an webinar titled "Triage Ethics During a Pandemic." In an effort to support the work of healthcare systems struggling with COVID-19, the Center for Christian Bioethics presented ethical guidelines and fielded questions from practicing clinicians, administrators, and students. Dr. Gerald Winslow began the presentation with a history of triage and examples of common triage situations such as transplantation and emergency department protocols. Moving to triage in a pandemic, Dr. Grace Oei discussed the tensions between clinical ethics and public health ethics. Dr. Oei argued that a form of explicit rationing with committees and policies is more ethical in a crisis than implicit rationing which functions on a smaller scale in an ad-hoc fashion. She also presented an ethical framework tailored to crisis response before transitioning to Dr. Gina Mohr who discussed allocation guidelines currently used in New York. Participants in the webinar asked multiple questions ranging from the appropriateness of specific procedures to coordination between hospitals and local governments. The Center for Christian Bioethics hopes this presentation and the included resources will prove useful to a broader audience and has made them available on the Adventist Bioethics Consortium website. The webinar is available to members of the Adventist Bioethics Consortium at their website for viewing.