Patients’ perspectives on ethical principles to fairly allocate scarce surgical resources during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands: a Q-methodology study

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals were faced with prioritisation dilemmas due to limited surgical capacity. While the views of healthcare professionals on fair allocation have been given considerable attention, the views of patients have been overlooked. To address this imbalance, our study aimed to identify which ethical principles are most supported by patients regarding the fair allocation of surgical resources.