Rationing in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit—ethical or unethical?

Rationing in health care is controversial, and even more so in pediatrics. Children are an inherently vulnerable group because they are reliant on their parents and caregivers to make decisions in their best interests and have no political voice. Historically, there has been general acceptance of the need to ration healthcare at a systems level, however there is controversy over whether healthcare professionals should be involved in rationing at the bedside. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that bedside rationing is unavoidable, at least in times of extreme resource scarcity. Internationally, there has been significant ethical analysis and guideline development to guide intensive care rationing decisions in the event that resources are overwhelmed. This paper explores the principles underlying distributive justice in healthcare rationing and discusses how these were operationalized in ethical guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, rationing is unavoidable and occurs constantly in everyday nursing and medical ICU practice, often in mundane and uncontroversial ways. Some argue that these everyday decisions are not true rationing decisions, but resource allocation, or stewardship decisions. We argue there are no clear lines between resource allocation and rationing decisions, rather that they occur on a spectrum. These everyday rationing decisions are particularly susceptible to personal biases that are often implicit. Due to the subtle and constant nature of most everyday rationing decisions, specific guideline development will rarely be practical or appropriate. However, it is possible to develop other processes to improve decision making. There are a variety of strategies we recommend for this including, encouraging reflective practice; developing explicit frameworks that promote collaborative decision making; being transparent about resource allocation and rationing decisions with colleagues, patients, and families; and promoting a workplace culture of speaking up and accessing support in identifying and managing everyday rationing decisions.