Thank you. Sedation may hasten death, but attention must be paid to intent. All of you out there may well want pain meds someday. I read this as the doctor being in battlefield conditions, without battlefield training. He knows a patient is about to demise, starts the chartwork and goes on to another patient. Not many here care that there might be residual spiritual trauma to the physician.
Who, after all, is a doctor and not a lawyer.
I read this as the doctor being in battlefield conditions, without battlefield training. He knows a patient is about to demise, starts the chartwork and goes on to another patient. Not many here care that there might be residual spiritual trauma to the physician.
She didn’t have hope of getting better and he had to make one of those “doctor life and death decisions” without having many alternatives/
I agree, anyone sitting around second guessing what the people on the ground were doing in this situation are just fools. Civilization is gone, help ain’t coming, limited resources, and you are resonsible for hundreds if not more patients with dwindling supplies and anarchy all around you. Nope, not going to play arm chair quarterback. The people who should be in jail over Katrina all hold or held government positions, not the doctors and nurses in the hospitals on the ground.
This same situation will happen again in a major urban earthquake, or another major hurricane or a month-long snowfall and blizzard which cuts off all help, all flights in or out, all ground transportation. Any medical personnel (and I was a medic) will be faced with similarly dire decisions. Triage will be required.