How to Fairly Allocate Scarce Medical Resources: Ethical Argumentation under Scrutiny by Health Professionals and Lay People.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Societies are facing medical resource scarcities, inter alia due to increased life expectancy and limited health budgets and also due to temporal or continuous physical shortages of resources like donor organs. This makes it challenging to meet the medical needs of all. Ethicists provide normative guidance for how to fairly allocate scarce medical resources, but legitimate decisions require additionally information regarding what the general public considers to be fair. The purpose of this study was to explore how lay people, general practitioners, medical students and other health professionals evaluate the fairness of ten allocation principles for scarce medical resources: 'sickest first', 'waiting list', 'prognosis', 'behaviour' (i.e., those who engage in risky behavi

SUBMITTER: Krutli P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4963105 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature