Page 19 - BusinessWest August 31, 2020

Peter DePergola
Director of Clinical Ethics, Baystate Health
This Pioneer Remains on the Leading Edge in the
PField of Bioethics
eter DePergola described it as a “haunt- ing experience.”
He then amended that statement slight- ly — but poignantly.
“It was incredibly haunting,” he told Busi- nessWest while retelling his experiences writing a white paper eventually to be titled “Ethical Guidelines for the Treatment of Patients with Suspected or Confirmed Novel Coronavirus Dis- ease (COVID-19),” published in the Online Jour- nal of Health Ethics.
As that title suggests, this is a guide to help medical professionals and healthcare facili- ties decide who would be treated for the virus and how; specifically, it addresses how limited resources are to be expended and in what cir- cumstances. It was a guide that kept him up nights while he was writing it, and one he truly hoped no one would ever have to use.
But when he wrote it — at the height of the
surge that hit the eastern part of the state in April — it seemed likely, if not almost certain, that his own employer, Baystate Health, would be putting it to use.
“I really thought — I truly believed — that we would be using this policy within weeks,” he said, adding that
he was working with administra-
tors at Baystate who were preparing
to become overwhelmed and would need guidance on, among other things, how to proceed when the number
of patients who needed a ventilator exceeded the number of machines available.
It never came to that, and DePer- gola hopes it never does, but his white paper is there for use if the circum- stances arise.
As for why it was so haunting, he
said he was writing guidelines, or thresholds, for receiving care that he knew his own loved ones would not meet.
Peter DePergola, wearing his mask outside Baystate Medical Center, a new requirement, has become a national leader in the emerging field of bioethics.
“As I wrote it, I realized that people that I cared about, even my own mother, may not qual- ify, or meet the criteria, that I have developed in collaboration with my colleagues, to receive a life-sustaining resource,” he said. “It was incredi- bly difficult to separate my own personal feelings and moral responsibilities to my family from the
greater good of the public.”
DePergola’s white paper goes a long way
toward explaining why he has become a leading voice in the emerging field of bioethics, not only in this region, but across the state and the nation.
DePergola
Continued on page 20
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