Quebec hospitals pushed to the limit as coronavirus patients increase Canadian hospitals regularly ration care, Maxwell Smith, bioethics professor at Western University, said Tuesday.
But that type of rationing is normal and involves deciding how quickly people see a doctor based on the urgency of their needs.Rationing care because there aren’t enough resources to provide lifesaving treatment, however, is “a totally unique situation that we haven’t faced in the past,” he said in an interview.Doctors and nurses are used to doing everything they can to help each individual patient, Bereza said, adding, “an extreme pandemic turns that completely upside down.” If the protocol is implemented, the focus instead becomes saving as many lives as.