The question becomes what does “act accordingly” mean?
Sure, they could leave the hospital and drive to a place where they heard is short of medical personnel. However, there are a lot of ways that act could turn out to really screw things up. Maybe FEMA was preparing to send a bunch of patients over to the hospital, but you haven’t heard about it yet. Maybe what they heard is entirely wrong, and they’re really needed elsewhere, but can’t be told that because they’re now on the road in a disaster area.
Disaster management isn’t about dumping as many resources as possible in the area, it’s about managing your resources, and applying them where and when they are most needed. Most of the time, the problem isn’t a lack of resources, it’s a lack of logistics.
More or less. And a lot of training programs have them pull this shift every 3-4 nights. The days in between are standard 12+ hour working days.
As I said before, off-duty interns tend to want to sleep, or maybe eat a decent meal. Showing up exhausted and unannounced at a disaster scene is really not the best use of anyone’s resources.
I agree completely. And having a bunch of doctors sitting around playing cards one place while a bunch of people were dying in another place to me indicates that resources were not being properly managed.
As for the idea that theoretical patients might have arrived at the hospital, I already addressed that point above; if you have to make a choice between addressing a real existing problem and addressing a hypothetical problem, you’re usually better off working on the real problem first. And my contention is such was the case here.
Many of you are arguing that the situation was okay because everything was going according to plan. I’m saying it wasn’t okay because it was a bad plan.
Most of the people who died, died because they drowned. Unless the doctors had their own rescue helicopters they wouldn’t do much good. Find me a cite where one person died that wouldn’t if there had been a doctor there without equipment. I’m sure there were some people who died because they didn’t get to the hospital in time. That was because of the flooding and lack of emergency transportation. Not lack of doctors roaming the streets.
My agenda? I just wanted to discuss the larger points made in the OP (generally, how fucked up things are), not nitpick exactly what doctors should do in a disaster. In other words, I would have enjoyed this thread if it had stayed on topic. If that’s an agenda, then mea culpa.
I think many people here are missing the point: Everyone but the rich is pretty much screwed when it comes right down to it. Nothing is guaranteed for the rest of us, not even help during a natural disaster. People are nitpicking the doctor issue, and getting whooshed on the rest.
People are “missing” this point because it’s bullshit, plain and simple.
I have never felt “pretty much screwed” over anything because I’m not rich. I’m got a lot of problems with the way some rich people act, but to believe they’re out to get me is tinfoil hattery of the highest order.
You wanted the discussion to be about “about the craphole the world is becoming” - which presupposes a certain unproven conclusion. Now that the thread has become critical of the horror story offered by the OP, you feel it’s lost your desired purpose.
I said I was disappointed at how the thread has gone, I didn’t say I was going to track everyone down and force them to talk about what interests me. This thread went down a path that I have no interest in, away from a path that I was interested in that the OP started himself, and that disappointed me, especially since I think the path not taken is a much more important one. I’ll get over my disappointment (in fact, already have).
Exactly. The rich don’t give a shit about me and I can’t think of a single thing in my life that was affected by something a rich person did to “get theirs.”
The logic behind this kind thinking is too twisted for me.
A national disaster which hundreds of millions of Americans were totally unaffected by, and which a good portion of them quite frankly didn’t give a shit about. I don’t recall firings squads being set up to deal with Unamerican Non-Helping Social Parasites, so I can see why you and Ms Klein want to set up a lynch mob to deal with this gap in the RO market.
And, more pertinently, it’s entirely possible that your neighbours will go mow their lawn or watch their favourite TV show rather than help you out. Because, you know, they are free to do so.
Most hospitals have disaster plans. Some even work with other hospitals to devise an area-wide plan. Yes, it’s a matter of logistics. Thus, preparation is needed. During disasters, some hospitals can be designated to take in emergency patients. Others take the “regular” patients already in those emergency centers.
Yes, there was still some flood water in the area. But no evacuation was attempted. (Unless FEMA was so modest that they avoided publicity for moving out those patients.) The doctors at the “nice” hospital weren’t to blame for the whole situation. But their complacency is disgusting.
Let’s hope that the area’s medical industry has managed to come up with a plan. And let’s hope the same for* your* area.
Hey, recreational outragers. If this intern was in the suburbs during Katrina, even if he wanted to go into the city proper and practice medicine in the streets, he wouldn’t have been allowed in. From what I understand, police had closed all routes in and were only allowing in rescue personnel to evacuate people… oh, and the press. Yeah, a significant number of people just went in on back roads to do renegade rescuing, but I don’t fault any trained physician for wanted to stay out in the 'burbs – where the casualties would presumably be evacuated – and wait for further instruction. As for the fact that he didn’t rush off to the New Orleans International Airport and start ministering to dehydrated evacuees, perhaps he felt his talents were better used at his employer hospital treating actual illnesses and injuries not doing triage and palliative care to people being airlifted out to Baton Rouge. Maybe he stood to lose his job if he failed to show up for his shift during an emergency. We don’t know and neither did Naomi Klein.
Yes, let’s do. In the meantime, maybe someone could explain what a doctor was supposed to do if 1) there was no plan that he was aware of, or 2) there was an inadequate plan? In the first case, I wouldn’t say a doctor made a bad decision to stay in his hospital, ready to treat patients. As many have pointed out, he’s probably a lot more useful there. In the second case, perhaps he WAS part of the plan, to be in his hospital ready to treat patients. I wouldn’t be too impressed if he decided to just wander the streets of NO looking for another way to be useful.