Balancing the benefits and burdens of ECMO. The nurse's role

Technologic innovations such as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation generate a myriad of ethical concerns that complicate clinical treatment decisions. Nurses must engage in deliberate actions to raise the issues of balancing the benefits and burdens of the technology, access to therapy, informed consent, and allocation of scarce resources, in order to provide ECMO services in an ethically sound manner. Consumers and providers of ECMO services must continue to examine and debate these issues in a reasoned, deliberate fashion and construct the necessary procedural safeguards that will ensure beneficent and just delivery of these services.