Stressful Evacuation In Natural Disaster

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most deadliest natural disasters in the history of the United States of America. At least 1,245 people in the hurricane and subsequent flooding. In reading the excerpt from Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink, there are certain ethical and legal issues that arise and ones that holds all those medical and health professionals accountable for their actions. Dr. Ana Pou was one of the head doctors who took a leadership role at Memorial Hospital after the backup generators had failed and the rescue teams were few and far between. A team of medical personnel which included Dr. Pou had categorized the remaining patients into an evacuating category. They felt that the most sick patients would be evacuated last because of available resources and essentially decided who would live and who would die. Dr. Pou denies her actions and states that she did what she felt was the right thing to do? But as Sherri Finks poses the question in her article “where is the line between comfort care and mercy killings”.

Natural disasters may lead to many ethical challenges that are different from normal medical practices. Disasters can vary when comparing to their time, place and extent. Therefore, ethical questions may not always have such simple solutions. Ethical values and principles in every aspect of health-care are very important. Reviewing legal and organizational regulations, developing health-care related guidelines, and disaster recovery plans, establishing on-call committees as well as an adequate in-service training of health-care workers for ethical capability are of the most important of steps. It is only by making efforts before disasters, that ethical challenges can be minimized in disaster responses.

Working in the field as health care professionals, we are faced with ethical dilemmas almost always. Although each individual posses different values, there are specific codes of conduct to abide by, despite personal beliefs. Without the use of a structural code, individuals in the health care field would make decisions based on their own personal beliefs in accordance to their culture and religion. In the case of Marion and the pacemaker, we witness the desires of the patient at hand, Marion, and her family, be interrogated by the floor nurses. Although the intent behind the actions of the floor nurses can be described as morally just, thinking they are helping preserve the life of Marion, based on medical ethics, their behavior is of some degree to be questioned. This paper will focus on the boundaries we witness crossed by floor nurses and how they go against the medical ethics approved, and what effects they have on patients and their care givers.

Healthcare organizations are committed to providing clients with quality service and experience while promoting safety, health, and healing. Nurses have the biggest impact in providing safe client care and are known for their commitment in improving or increasing client health. However, this ethical commitment may not always be met due to breakdowns in healthcare delivery. Deviations such as adoption of unsafe practices or behaviors can lead to sentinel events. Any disconnects or disruptions can be a detriment to client care. This paper will present recent cases of witnessed breakdowns of facility protocols that have led to adoptions of unsafe nursing practices, discuss its impact to healthcare, and how it has affected my personal perspective on the issue.

The dilemma is that Mrs. Margie Whitson a patient at Golden Oaks Rehabilitation Center is going through some very hard times after just loosing her son William about a week ago. She has also had to deal with loosing her husband in the past 5 years leading up to this. She is also reflecting back to when she lost her first son to a motor vehicle accident. Margie is having a very difficult time taking this all in and now feels all alone and wants the one and only thing keeping her alive removed. Margie suffered a heart attack 2 years ago that almost took her life and she

“Deadly Choices at Memorial” forces many realities and problems for us to confront. The article forces us to make difficult decisions in a short amount of time in extreme, critical situations. Katrina put doctors and nurses into difficult situations on what to do with patients during the evacuation of the powerless hospital. They first had to rank the condition of the patients on who can be evacuated and who cannot be evacuated. It also brings about the question, how is it decided? Deichmann met with many of the roughly two dozen

How do explain something that is completely in the wrong as ok? Why can people, organizations and even governments make irrational decision over and over again? The United States prides itself on it’s ability to be a free country and support freedom of religion and freedom of speech but throughout history their are numerous accounts of the United States going against it’s own beliefs and treating it’s people in terrible ways. One example of the United States going against it’s pride in equality and rhetoric of democracy and acting in ways of exclusion and inequality is during World War II when the United States forced evacuation of the Japanese to internment camps. The memoir, “Looking

Techniques that were used or could have been used to calm the fears of the people interviewed are to use short and concise statements. Perform active listening and confirm statements by repeating it back to the person being spoken with, use confrontation avoidance, and De-escalation. The other nursing personnel could be prepared to help in responding to a similar emergency with a much larger affected area (e.g., the effect of Hurricane Katrina). Through the development of a well-organized disaster response plan. Public health staff requires National Incident Management System (NIMS) training. Emergency preparedness training should be performed at least every six months. There needs to be a method of communication in case power lines, towers and electricity are

According to Vance Packard, leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something that you are convinced should be done (Lewis, 2003). Leadership is a pertinent part of project management. James Lewis (2003) says leadership is not a position; it’s the ability to gain commitment from people. According to Professor Warren G. Bennis, “Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right”. The importance of leadership in a project is demonstrated in the case study, “A Peaceful Evacuation: Building a Multi-Project Team Battalion by Leading Upward”. This case study involves two leaders, who had similar, but mostly, different

“A disaster is an event that is a natural or man-made occurrence that can disrupt or destroy the lives of those it affects” (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2014). “Management of a disaster includes four phases; prevention, preparedness, response and recovery” (Stanhope & Lancaster, 2014). To date there have been 154 hospital-based shootings, which resulted in 235 dead or injured. (C.Catlett, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to identify emergency preparedness and response to hospital based shootings, and the role of the public health nurse in such a disaster.

Even though the facility shouldn’t hold residents that are too ill, executives and management of the facilities encourage these types of residents to move in anyway. Instead of receiving the proper care by trained professional, residents receive care from untrained workers that are told to not let anyone know because of this encouragement. The facilities take advantage of a resident’s lingering dying trajectory to gain more profit but the care of the residents at the facility

Ethical principals are the seed of which nursing flourishes from. Many ethical principals were involved and dishonored in this case such as, justice, autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, confidentiality and fidelity (Burkhardt et al., 2014). I believe justice was the main principal involved as the entire ethical predicament was revolved around unjust behavior and treatment of the residents. The residents were treated poorly and given unequal rights as a causation of their illnesses. Autonomy, an essential piece of human rights was also being violated in this ethical dilemma. The residents did not have any choice or independence in their care or how they were being treated. Beneficence and non-maleficence are significant dynamics of this ethical situation, as the health care providers needed to reflect on how they can have the maximum benefit while diminishing possible damage to the residents (Burkhardt et al., 2014). Our actions as nurses should always be beneficent and non maleficent, continuously being kind, compassionate and doing what is in their best interest as well a removing and preventing harm. Confidentiality is a key component of nursing and it was blatantly being violated as the health care

The burden of emergency management has grown great deal in the last few decades. We have seen an increase in natural disasters, a new threat of terrorism on our front door and an increase in manmade disasters. All of these have tested emergency management in a number of cities and towns across the nation. It is not always disasters that present problems for emergency managers. We have to look beyond our traditional view of emergency management of helping us during times of disasters and view what issues they consider may affect their emergency response. Issues that emergency management see that are moving into the critical area are issues of urbanization and hazard exposure, the rising costs of disaster recovery, and low priority of emergency management.

Everyday, healthcare professionals are faced with ethical dilemmas in their workplace. These ethical dilemmas need to be addressed in order to provide the best care for the patient. Healthcare professionals have to weigh their own personal beliefs, professional beliefs, ethical understandings, and several other factors to decide what the best care for their patient might be. This is illustrated in Mrs. Smith’s case. Mrs. Smith is an 85 year old who has suffered from a large stroke that extends to both of her brains hemispheres which has left her unconscious. She only has some brain stem reflexes and requires a ventilator for support. She is unable to communicate how she wishes to proceed with her healthcare. Mrs. Smith’s children, Sara and Frank have different views regarding their mother’s plan of care. The decision that needs to be made is whether to prolong Mrs. Smith’s life, as Sara would like to do, or stop all treatments and care, as Frank feels his mother would want. In the healthcare field, there are situations similar to this case that happen daily where moral and ethical judgment is necessary to guide the decision that would be best for the patient. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss, compare and contrast the personal and professional values, ethical principles, and legal issues regarding Mrs. Smith’s quality of life and further plan of care.

These weeks have been hard on everyone; this time more than ever makes it hard for me to think about resigning. As much as McMurphy has changed this ward for the better, there are moments when I wish I could just leave. Before McMurphy arrived there had been a form of brutal control. The patient life`s were scheduled from the time they woke up to the time they went to bed, shoved down their throat, whether they like it or not by the intimidating Nurse Ractched. Each day was a game uno, each day a patient grows restless, defies Nurse Ratched only to be oppressed by her accusing stare. This life was neither free nor safe. Safe is what these patients need in this tough time of their lives. Nurse Ratched imposes discipline on her ward