Thanks for the info. One question; what would you do if, as in the show, the victim seems to be backing out of completing the rape kit? Because it seems to me that you’ve got one chance to collect the evidence, and if they change their mind later and want to pursue it, it’s too late (because the evidence is lost).
I actually thought Dana pressured her too much. I would have explained she can come back anytime within the next (I believe) 72 hours. I would be clear that after that time, evidence could not be collected. I would give her resources, the advocate could talk it over with her. But ultimately, she gets to decide. We give the information, the resources, and voluntary services, but she always gets to decide. And we don’t view it as our place to tell any victim we know what’s best for their life. They had their agency taken away from them. We do everything we can to give it back.
Hard not to feel emotional about this because in my own situation I had no agency with regard to how things unfolded and I really think it resulted in everything being much more traumatic. And mine didn’t even involve an exam. I just had no information, no warning, no control, and very little support. What happened after I reported to a counselor is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
I think a lot of people think the ideal outcome of a sexual assault is a successful report and conviction. Personally I think the ideal outcome is whatever the victim needs to feel okay again. The odds of a successful conviction are vanishingly small - most rape kits find nothing but DNA - and that’s assuming police departments even bother to process the evidence - so there’s little incentive to follow that course. It’s a personal choice, and in my opinion, that choice is sacred.
Thanks. And yes, I’ve heard of the backlog of unprocessed rape kits, which is ridiculous.
One thing that can tilt the evidence collection in their favor is specialized equipment that can capture injuries that aren’t visible to the naked eye. But it’s expensive. We have at least one of these specialized cameras, I think it was about $15,000.
We mainly use it for domestic violence strangulation, because we do those exams too. Strangulation rarely leaves visible marks on the neck, but with this camera we can prove it happened.
Pretty cool.
A cyber-attack is a valid reason for a hospital diverting emergency patients. That said, shutting down all computer systems to prevent a cyber-attack is not a valid response. Most, if not all, hospitals do have paper procedures (which are drilled regularly) to carry on operations when clinical information systems fail, however all that would be needed would be for the IT department to isolate their network. Most CIS (Epic, Cerner etc.) does have an external component that requires connectivity to the outside for full functionality, but it will still function internally with no internet connection and reconcile once the connection is restored. Really the only function affected would be patient transfers. Even then patient records, test results, and imaging would be dumped on a thumb drive and sent with the patient to the forwarding facility.
Full disclosure, I am the Disaster Recovery coordinator for a medical school and teaching hospital which is also a designated level 1 trauma center. We call this a Tuesday.
I’ve seen some gruesome things on the Pitt but for some reason I could not handle the guy getting a tube jammed up his nose. He seemed to handle it better than I did.
I don’t know if it’s a common “either-or” situation – nose-tube vs. intubation, that is – but if there sometimes is a choice for the doctors to make … I’d think the nose-tube, from the patients’ perspective, has to win convincingly.
That’s a good point. Intubation has to be worse. The fact that he was conscious gave me the willies.
Just curious if anyone else runs into any issues when watching it “live” on Thursdays? There were a couple of weeks where we’d start the show, it would play the recap, then stop. So I’d have to back out and start the episode again, we’d have to watch the recap again (because there doesn’t seem to be a “skip recap” option) and then the episode would play OK.
This week, it froze three times in the exact same spot in the recap where Dr Robby yells for someone to get a picture of the board before it goes down. And every time I’d have to back out and start again.
I may have to start watching on Friday nights instead.
I’m not sure what you mean by watching it “live.” The show is available to watch (i.e., stream) at any time after 9pm Eastern time on Thursdays. I usually start watching five minutes or so after the hour and generally don’t have issues.
I miss the days when watching an hour-long show at 9pm on a weeknight was feasible. I’m barely coherent by that hour. Yay parenthood!
Yeah, basically the same night the episode airs, within 5-10 minutes of when the episode is available. As opposed to hours or days later.
That shouldn’t make a difference, though perhaps only so many streams are available and too many people are trying to watch the new episode as soon as it’s available?
Maybe they really wanted to emphasize that point. 