By Michael J. Rigby The COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious challenge to our existing healthcare infrastructure. Rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 can easily overwhelm healthcare capacity, which can exceed the number of intensive care unit beds and ventilators. Once this threshold is surpassed, any serious yet treatable disease becomes life-threatening. Without a vaccine or other preventive […]
Month: June 2020
How should non-life-saving surgery be rationed?
Helen Turnham, Guy Thorburn and Dominic Wilkinson. The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a total shut down of elective surgery within the NHS. In the forthcoming months there will be re-initiation of elective surgery but at significantly reduced capacity. The combination of pre-existing backlog, a protracted period of no surgery and an anticipated future period of […]
Pandemic preparedness: Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
By Lorcan O’Byrne. As students cannot match the knowledge, skills and clinical experience of a qualified doctor, one might then contend that their involvement in the care of a patient with COVID-19 would primarily be for the students’ educational benefit, rather than for the provision of meaningful healthcare. Further, the COVID-19 pandemic is necessitating that […]