This is the first time in the country that a project has attempted to formulate intensive care guidelines on a state-wide basis.
Similar projects are in progress in several U.S. cities, including Denver, Houston and Sacramento.
Each group is responsible for preparing guidelines drafts that will be presented to public groups and other health care professionals. With the help of the Wisconsin Humanities Grant, trained resource persons will solicit citizen responses to the guidelines through a series of public forums that will be held in nine districts around the state. The forums will explore the values and the ethics involved in intensive care medical decisions. In the third phase of the project, members of the five working groups will reconvene to examine the responses generated by the public forums and, based on that input, will revise their guidelines.