By: Thomas I. LiknessEBC News Service

(Eagle News) — Doctors and nurses in the western Canadian province of Alberta may soon have to make decisions that are a twist on this old ethical question.

You have seven passengers on a sinking ship but life boats can only accommodate six people. Whose lives do you save?

For physicians on the frontlines of the province’s hospitals, this is more than a philosophical debate — they may find themselves making life-and-death decisions about who will receive care in a treatment environment with ever shrinking resources.

For a second day in a row, intensive care units in Alberta are packed with a record number of COVID-19 patients.

On Tuesday, 212 people with COVID-19 were in ICU beds — 91% of them either unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated.

The situation is so bad that most elective surgeries in the province have been canceled because there are no critical care beds left for patients who develop complications

Decisions on who lives; who dies

And what about those requiring emergency surgery? That’s when things could get ugly.

If the situation worsens, tough decisions will have to be made.

Alberta Health Services has dusted off the triage protocol manuals which guide professionals on who gets treatment when medical resources are limited.

Doctors may find themselves in the position of having one ventilator but two people needing it.

Does the ventilator go to an accident victim with life-threatening injuries or to a COVID-19 patient with pneumonia?

Triage protocols dictate that priority will be given to the patient most likely to survive and that is dictated by medical assessments.

Factors such as age, sex, race, disability or religion are not taken into consideration.

Few Canadian healthcare professionals have ever had to make these kinds of decisions.

Healthcare workers traumatized by triage decisions

And the gravity of their actions will weigh heavily on their minds.

Medical journals have published studies showing workers suffer trauma that lasts long after the triage decisions they made.

How effective will these workers be in the future? What impact will this have on their lives outside of their work? And will that trauma prompt them to exit their fields of expertise, leaving the healthcare system with even fewer resources?

One hopes the Alberta government is also pondering these questions while it decides what its next move will be to deal with the pandemic and its effect on healthcare.

So far it has done little to stem the transmission of the virus and case counts continue to grow.

One has to wonder whether healthcare in Alberta is a victim of the triage system.

The province’s healthcare system is on life support and the people who can resuscitate it appear to have abandoned their patient.
(Eagle News Service)