Developing Shortages of at least 15 drugs essential to treatment of critical patients including propofol, fentanyl and even ibuprofen: Report. Nurse says, “I would rather die.”
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and David Mark)
This report is shocking and unsettling. It comes from Premier, described as a “healthcare improvement company” by Medscape Medical News in an article that quotes a tweet from a nurse as saying she’d rather die than be intubated and put on a ventilator without these drugs. The list of drugs that are developing shortages is long and includes such familiar items as albuterol and ibuprofen. The shortage appears to be worst for drugs essential to, specifically, paralyze and sedate patients who are on ventilators. I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that it has come to this. It is as if “A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom.” (from a detective novel I read a long time ago: Google says it’s “Murder My Sweet” by Raymond Chandler)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 