The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the healthcare systems of virtually every country on earth, and the UK has been no exception. A massive mobilisation and reorganisation of the British National Health Service (NHS) to address the challenges we were facing from this new and still poorly understood disease happened in weeks. And in the midst of this mass reorganisation, a lot of thinking had to go into how best to allocate limited resources as we faced a potential overload on the NHS.

Two of our members, Dr Melody Redman and Dr James Haslam, put together a paper looking at these questions and applying a biblical principles to the question of resource allocation. It sounds dry, but it is a matter that could quite literally mean life of death. In this special, extra edition of 1st incision, Steve Fouch has a wide ranging discussion with James and Melody about how we decide who gets what treatment, how COVID-19 has changed the way we think about how we allocate limited resources, and how the public's thinking has changed as a result of the pandemic. We also look at what challenges the future holds.

You can read Melody and James' paper, COVID-19: When demand outstrips supply and other resources on COVID-19 on the CMF Website.