The surging COVID-19 pandemic has raised ethical and moral dilemmas that Western nations with first-rate medical care facilities rarely confront—how to best allocate standard life-saving medical resources when escalating demand outstrips supply. Sadly, these quandaries are familiar challenges in resource-poor countries. What makes this pandemic notable is that the scope and number of reported cases have been primarily in First World nations, raising questions in some settings about the use of emergency treatments like resuscitation care for in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA). This perspective reviews the debate around these ethical and moral dilemmas more broadly but focuses specifically on IHCA and the response of the medical community.
Keywords: emergency treatment; ethics; pandemic; personal protective equipment; resuscitation.