• Marcelo José Dos Santos, Maristela Santini Martins, Fabiana Lopes Pereira Santana, Maria Carolina Silvano Pacheco Corrêa Furtado, Fabiana Cristina Bazana Remédio Miname, Rafael Rodrigo da Silva Pimentel, Ágata Nunes Brito, Patrick Schneider, Edson Silva Dos Santos, and Luciane Hupalo da Silva.
• Research Group "Bioethics and Administration: Teaching and Health Care", Nursing School of University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. mjosan1975@usp.br.
• Crit Care. 2020 Sep 29; 24 (1): 582.

AbstractAfter the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, the elaboration of comprehensive and preventive public policies became important in order to stop the spread of the disease. However, insufficient or ineffective measures may have placed health professionals and services in the position of having to allocate mechanical ventilators. This study aimed to identify instruments, analyze their structures, and present the main criteria used in the screening protocols, in order to help the development of guidelines and policies for the allocation of mechanical ventilators in the COVID-19 pandemic. The instruments have a low level of scientific evidence, and, in general, are structured by various clinical, non-clinical, and tiebreaker criteria that contain ethical aspects. Few instruments included public participation in their construction or validation. We believe that the elaboration of these guidelines cannot be restricted to specialists as this question involves ethical considerations which make the participation of the population necessary. Finally, we propose seventeen elements that can support the construction of screening protocols in the COVID-19 pandemic.

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