'Rule of rescue' often prevails in critical care units
High stakes life and death decisions are made every day by doctors and nurses in critical care units, but increasingly critical care clinicians are also tasked with containing costs and managing scarce resources in light of rising demands for and costs of care they provide. Physicians are often asked to consider limiting services for their patients to benefit society more broadly. Now, a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania indicates that the so-called "rule of rescue" -- whereby clinicians are prone to try to save their own patients as opposed to opening up a bed for a new patient -- often prevails even in the face of substantial social benefit in terms of cost containment and procurement of organ donations.