‘NIGHTMARE’ SCENARIO POSSIBLE OVER ICU BEDS

Dr. Eugene Bereza calls it the “nightmare scenario,” the possibility doctors in Quebec will have to implement a government protocol to decide who is admitted to intensive care and who will die. Bereza, an ethics consultant at the Mcgill, reacted to news that the province’s hospitals could start using the protocol within weeks. “We never anticipated this would happen ... in a non- war context,” Bereza said Tuesday. On Monday, Dr. Lucie Opatrny, Quebec’s assistant deputy health minister, said hospitals had started simulations regarding intensive care beds. Doctors are used to doing everything they can to help individual patients. Were the protocol implemented, the focus instead becomes saving as many lives as possible, with the available resources.