Hard Call University of Colorado

Sentenced to Sickness? Covid-19 Behind Bars. What should happen when losing your freedom could also mean losing your life? We follow the story of Eraina Pretty, Maryland’s longest serving incarcerated woman who at age 60 is at risk for severe complications of COVID 19 after 42 years behind bars for crimes she committed as a teenager.

How special are health care workers?

COVID Quandaries – the Hard Call team is back at work, producing a series of special episodes exploring some of the toughest ethical decisions facing patients, clinicians, health systems and policymakers as all confront the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic.

Max got what he wanted, but it didn’t work out as he’d hoped. In the final episode of our pilot season we ask several guests, was it worth it? What is the value of a few extra months of life, when those months include indignity, suffering and pain? Drs. Daniel Ariely, Steven Pearson and Larry Allen contribute their answers to this very hardest of all hard calls.

Max wants to terminate his treatment and have his LVAD turned off, but stopping the LVAD means he would die almost immediately. His doctor is morally opposed to stopping the device, or even to finding another doctor to do it, as he feels this would be tantamount to murder. Who decides?

ax isn’t the only one with a decision to make. Even if he wants an LVAD — a partial artificial heart that plugs into an electrical outlet — his medical team has to agree he’d be a good candidate to get one. And it’s not just his medical condition they need to figure out — it’s whether his daughter is capable of handling a heart pump in an emergency.