Jun 9, 2020

Congratulations to Clinical Nurse Ethicist Karen Jones, RN, RNC-NIC and Associate Professor Curtis Coughlin, MBe, MS who recently passed the Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certified (HEC-C) exam!

Jun 8, 2020

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOETHICS: This paper discusses resource allocation and several related ethical challenges to the healthcare system and society, including how to define benefit, how to handle informed consent, the special needs of pediatric patients, how to engage communities in these difficult decisions, and how to mitigate concerns of discrimination and the effects of structural inequities

May 22, 2020

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOETHICS: Apnea testing involves discontinuing the support of a mechanical ventilator in order to determine if a patient is able to initiate spontaneous breathing. Center faculty Brian M. Jackson, MD concludes that, "physicians should not proceed with apnea testing unless the patient’s decision-making surrogate has given informed consent."

May 19, 2020

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE: Center Director and co-author Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH concludes, "To ensure the trustworthiness of the health system, disability rights advocates and health care leaders should work together to finalize crisis triage plans that save the most lives, protect the equal worth of all persons, and enhance communities’ capacity to heal in the wake of a once-in-a century pandemic."

May 1, 2020

INTERMOUNTAIN JEWISH NEWS: This time, equality is a letter to the editor from the "Lessons Learned" group of the Holocaust, Genocide and Contemporary Bioethics Program, which reminds us that the mistakes and shortcomings of medicine during the Holocaust should inform our decision-making in medical ethics during today’s pandemic. CBH Director Matthew Wynia says, “We need to be able to look back and say we made those decisions in a way that maintains the trust of the community, that maintains social cohesion, and allows us to heal.”

May 13, 2020

LUMINAS: Faculty Affiliate Roz Pierson of Luminas, conducted an online survey of over 100 oncologists across the US, to uncover the impact that the pandemic has had on their practice, patient management and treatment patterns.

May 8, 2020

CPR - COLORADO MATTERS: Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH joins a discussion about balancing Colorado's health-related restrictions with activities that bring joy and meaning to people's lives, and how the Covid guidelines impact one's physical and mental well-being.

May 13, 2020

COLORADO TIMES RECORDER: Proposals like Brauchler’s are an “illustration of how the response [to the pandemic] has been increasingly converted into a partisan issue. That’s sad because it shouldn’t be partisan,” CBH Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH wrote in an email to the Colorado Times Recorder. “Both Republicans and Democrats are dying of this illness – and we all care about the people in our families and communities who are at particular risk.”

May 8, 2020

NEWSWEEK: "In a fast-moving pandemic, protecting individuals' rights to privacy limits the ability of the government to protect the health of the population," said CBH Director of Research, Eric G. Campbell, PhD.

Apr 24, 2020

BLOOMBERG: "We're almost certainly going to have some people with non-Covid disease who are harmed, as a result of delays in their care," said Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH.

Apr 23, 2020

POLITIFACT: Several states credited social distancing, statewide shelter-in-place policies and other mitigation efforts aimed at slowing the spread of the Coronavirus with keeping their hospitals from being overwhelmed with patients or burning through their ventilators. "All those measures are helping, and they’re why we didn’t run out of ventilators," said Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities.

Apr 22, 2020

DENVER POST: “There’s the best way to do this and then there’s the way we’re gonna have to do this,” said Center faculty Daniel Goldberg, JD, PhD. “There’s not an ideal way. It’s not our world — it’s the virus’s world.”

Apr 21, 2020

ROLLING STONE: Center faculty Daniel Goldberg, JD, PhD is quoted, “Typically, having a communicable disease damages a person’s status, resulting in stigma. But an immunity card system would be the inverse, indicating when a person who is thought to be immune to the virus achieves a positive social status, along with the resulting benefits — like being able to go to work, visit friends or go to restaurants. It’s problematic from an ethical standpoint to do that on the basis of disease status.”

Apr 14, 2020

NEW YORK TIMES: Imagine that you’re a physician at a hospital overwhelmed by the coronavirus. Three new patients have just arrived in your I.C.U., each gasping for air— a 75-year-old grandfather who was in perfect health just a week ago, a 30-year-old woman who has diabetes and asthma, and a 50-year-old I.C.U. nurse who, like you, has been treating coronavirus patients for weeks.

Apr 7, 2020

AAMC: Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH is quoted, “Let’s say you have five patients for every one ventilator. That’s an incredibly tragic and difficult, Sophie’s Choice-type of decision.”

Apr 6, 2020

KUNC COLORADO EDITION: Governor Polis’ Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee recently updated their crisis standard of care guidelines. Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH participated in development of these triage guidelines, and explains their efforts to ensure equity of care for COVID-19 patients across the state.

Apr 1, 2020

MSNBC: Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities and Douglas White, MD, MAS, Endowed Chair for Ethics in Critical Care Medicine at University of Pittsburgh discuss the difficult decision-making processes health care organizations face during the COVID-19 pandemic, on MSNBC.

Apr 3, 2020

THE ATLANTIC: “We need to be able to look back and say we made those decisions in a way that maintains the trust of the community, that maintains social cohesion, and allows us to heal,” Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH said.

Apr 3, 2020

NEWSWEEK: "People making triage decisions should not even have access to information about a patient's race or religious background and whether they're disabled, homeless or a major hospital donor," says Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH. "Never in my lifetime have we had anything like this. You have to go back to World War II to see the kinds of decisions that are being made right now."

Apr 1, 2020

THE DENVER CHANNEL-7 NEWS: Center Director Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH is a part of the Governor's Expert Emergency Epidemic Response Committee, a team of doctors helping finalize guidelines for patient care if supplies and ICU beds become in short supply. "These are decisions we hope to never have to make, but it would be irresponsible given what has happened in the rest of the world including Seattle, in New York and New Orleans, and other places around the U.S., to assume that we are never going to see that kind of a situation here," Wynia said.