Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic

Ethics Leaders Discuss Hospital Guidelines on May 4

Register with Harvard Key

Register with ANY email

The current and future uncertainty about whether hospitals have enough ventilators for everyone who needs one is prompting a broader discussion about how hospitals allocate critical medical technology and resources.

This panel discussion will explore the nuanced and complicated set of decisions around ventilator
allocation that hospitals and caregivers may face, touching on lessons we can learn from other past
situations where it has been necessary to ration other life-saving treatments, such as dialysis machines in the 1960s and the ongoing rationing of transplantable organs.

Robert Truog, Mildred Solomon, and David Jones will describe how hospitals create guidelines about rationing ventilators and whether things like patients' predicted likelihood of survival, other serious medical conditions, age, and being a healthcare worker should factor into these protocols.

This is a free online event that will take place on Monday, May 4 at 5:00 p.m. ET. Registration is required.