SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Doctors swear an oath to provide the best possible care to their patients, but what happens when staffing or resources are exhausted?
"Then decisions would be made based off of who has the best chance of survival," said pulmonologist, Dr. Vanessa Walker, a member of the board of directors at the Sierra Sacramento Valley Medical Society.
Under crisis care mode, circumstances force medical teams to prioritize some patients over others. Dr. Vanessa Walker said medical professionals make difficult decisions every day and are professionally suited to determine who has the best chance of survival, but still, the triage involves an emotionally draining ethical web of decisions.
"I'm not planning on it happening, and we don't hope it will happen, but that's why we ask the public to please help us so that we don't get into that situation," Walker said.
Walker, a crisis care specialist, has been treating COVID-19 patients in ICU's across the region.
"It's been frustrating, frankly, and frustrating because you're taking care of patients and you're seeing things bad things happen to them that you know are totally preventable," Walker said.
In her experience, the recent surge of coronavirus hospitalizations she has seen were largely linked to Thanksgiving gatherings, where public health guidance was ignored.
She said following guidance to mask up and avoid gatherings prevents hospitals from going over the brink and frees up resources so health care workers can save lives. That's their priority.
When a hospital reaches capacity, Walker said that doesn't mean patients will be turned away.
"(Hospitals) will exhaust all resources throughout the entire (region) to make sure they can provide care to that person," she said.
It's only after that point where crisis care decisions may have to be made. Walker said she doesn't expect this to happen in the Sacramento region, but after witnessing medical infrastructure crumble in other states, she knows it's a possibility if people continue to ignore public health guidance and hospitalizations surge out of control.
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