Background: The expectation of pandemic-induced severe resource shortages has prompted authorities to draft and update frameworks to guide clinical decision-making and patient triage. While these documents differ in scope, they share a utilitarian focus on the maximization of benefit. This utilitarian view necessarily marginalizes certain groups, in particular individuals with increased medical needs. Main body: Here, we posit that engagement with the disability critique demands that we broaden our understandings of justice and fairness in clinical decision-making and patient triage. We propose the capabilities theory, which recognizes that justice requires a range of positive capabilities/freedoms conducive to the achievement of meaningful life goals, as a means to do so. Informed by a disability rights critique of the clinical response to the pandemic, we offer direction for the construction of future clinical triage protocols which will avoid ableist biases by incorporating a broader apprehension of what it means to be human. Conclusion: The clinical pandemic response, codified across triage protocols, should embrace a form of justice which incorporates a vision of pluralistic human capabilities and a valuing of positive freedoms.
CITATION STYLE
Zhu, J., Brenna, C. T. A., McCoy, L. G., Atkins, C. G. K., & Das, S. (2022). An ethical analysis of clinical triage protocols and decision-making frameworks: what do the principles of justice, freedom, and a disability rights approach demand of us? BMC Medical Ethics, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-022-00749-0
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