Kohn and colleagues [67] sent questionnaires to a national sample of US ICU clinicians, soliciting their preferences for allocating their last bed to a gravely ill patient with little chance of surviving versus a deceased or dying patient for whom aggressive management could help others through organ donation. The authors received completed surveys from 684 of 2,206 physicians (31%) and 438 of 988 nurses (44%). They found that physicians were more likely than nurses to adhere to the ''rule of rescue'' by allocating the last bed to the gravely ill patient (46 vs. 33%). The magnitude of the social benefit to be obtained through organ donor management (5 or 30 lifeyears added for transplant recipients) had small and inconsistent effects on clinicians' willingness to prioritise the donor. The most common reason for allocating the last bed to an identifiable patient was that clinicians perceived strong obligations to identifiable living patients.