UK’s ICU ‘scoring’ system is not being used in Irish hospitals
THE head of Ireland’s intensive care doctors has called for the introduction of a national policy on the rationing of beds in
Intensive Care Units (ICUs) should hospitals become overwhelmed.
According to the president of the Intensive Care Society of Ireland, Catherine Motherway, there should also be a public consultation about how critically ill Covid-19 patients should be prioritised.
Her remarks came after a document – purporting to reveal a ‘scoring’ system to determine which seriously ill people with Covid-19 would get life-saving ventilator and intensive care treatment – was circulated among Irish healthcare workers.
The document appears to have originated in the UK and it advises medics to reserve ICU treatment for those under the age of 65.
It also emerged at the same time that the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence advised medics to allocate intensive care beds for those who were ‘reasonably certain’ of surviving. After studying the document, Dr Motherway told the Irish Mail on Sunday this weekend she believed it was a draft paper written in the UK and she stressed that no such scoring system had yet been introduced into Irish hospitals.
‘This is not being used in any institution here,’ she said. ‘It is a draft UK document and draft only to my knowledge and may never be formally published or agreed upon. We continue to see cases referred to us in critical care and access them based on clinical need using our normal processes.’
Dr Motherway added: ‘It is possible with Covid that age may be an independent factor in determining poorer outcomes but this is a new disease.
‘If it were the case that we were forced by circumstance to use such tools as a support to clinical decision making, if overwhelmed, it is my view they should be communicated to the public and it should be a national support tool,’ she said.