Simulating Crisis Standards of Care and Developing an Equitable Life Support Allocation Protocol

When the US healthcare system is overwhelmed by disaster, Crisis Standards of Care guide the triage teams forced to choose which patients receive scarce life support treatments in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). There is an active bioethical debate about what ethical principles should be used to construct these protocols. Dr. Parker’s project will seek to develop and use a sophisticated simulation model of ICU crisis scenarios to evaluate the bioethical consequences of the currently published Crisis Standards of Care and test novel equity-promoting alternatives.