The pandemic flu has taken its toll on the community. More and more patients are requiring ventilator support. There is a shortage of ventilators in your area and a request for additional equipment has been made to the federal government, as the President (or Prime Minister) has declared the epidemic a national disaster. However, decisions as to how to allocate the ventilators to those who critically need them must be made accordingly. You are working as the advanced practice nurse in the medical ICU and the policy is to use the hospital’s triage protocols and the CDC’s Ethical Guidelines in Pandemic Influenza (2007) to make these types of decisions. Your team is making rounds on the patients, as there are two intubated patients in the ER that are being manually oxygenated with bag/valve/mask devices until a ventilator becomes available, One of the ICU patients is on a ventilator after suffering a severe stroke and did not have an advanced directive on record prior to coming into the ER via EMS last night.
You know that one of the patients in the ER is a 25-year-old immigrant mother of five with no health insurance and the other is a 65-year-old local businessman accompanied by his wife and adult children. What dilemmas would you and your team face in allocating a ventilator to only one of these patients?
write a mini-paper that is 2-3 pages (not including the title page and references), considering the above points but organizing your paper with supporting evidence of the expectations of role and ethics per your professional governing body (ANA or CNA). Sources should be cited in APA format.
APA/ if any text statement is left without citation, your mark will be zero (Please be careful)
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Stakeholders/ Who are the stakeholders in this decision? (Consider all that could be impacted)
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Assessment/
What further information might you need to make your decision? If you do not have access to any further information, can your decision be made solely on readings and other relevant information (professional organization websites, media distribution of current opinion of experts)?
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Theoretical Frameworks/
What theories (nursing/ethics/philosophy/education) could you use as a framework for your presentation of your decision?
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Applicability/
Can your decision be applied to all Advanced Practice Nurses?
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Future relevance/
Is your decision timely enough to be relevant but could be consistently applied in future considerations? (This may or may not be possible)