Rationing medical treatment in a disaster

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Rationing medical treatment in a disaster

dianoia · Senior Member

You know you've had peace in your country for several generations when something like this becomes news. I find it bizarre that the article makes triage sound like a new concept.

mirkwood · Senior Bucketkeeper

Yep, that is triage. Crappy thing to have to make a decision about.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Yes, we're becoming further and further removed from war and cataclysm. We freak if the power goes out and get pissed when McDonald's says their credit card machine is down, will that be a problem... HECK YEAH IT'S A PROBLEM err... sorry.

Organist · Senior Member

Should we start triaging now? Those same people are the ones who already take up most of your health care dollars.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Organist.. What .. is that?

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

yeah... it looks, um, intimidating.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

And the size of it... is this thing golf-club sized?

beefche · Profuse Pontificator

Ya'll are so funny. Obviously, it's an under the car bomb detector.

beefche · Profuse Pontificator

Although I'm sure ya'll would have guessed it was a magnetic scrap picker-upper, or reflex checker, or modern tinker toy parts, or the broken wheel of a model airplane. But, ya'll would have been wrong.

LoudmouthMormon · Profuse Pontificator

Organist wrote:

Should we start triaging now? Those same people are the ones who already take up most of your health care dollars.

Ok - I'm a little scared of that whatever-it-is too, so I'm giving this answer from a safe distance, and over my shoulder in case I have to run away real quick.

Triage: the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.

Humans have been doing triage across the planet since the dawn of time, whenever the number of sick or injured has exceeded the available resources. You pick the course of action that has the greatest number of people alive when you're all done.

StarTrek-Voyager had a cool episode where their Holographic Doctor program worked himself up into a guilt-ridden feedback loop because he had to choose which injured crewman to treat first, and they were such similar cases with such equal chances of survival, he picked the one he was friends with.

About every third episode of M*A*S*H dealt with Hawkeye drinking himself stupid because some kid died while he was operating on some other kid.

LifeFlight helicopters visiting bus accidents need to figure out who gets to the hospital in 10 minutes and who gets there half an hour later.

It ain't exactly a new thing.

Now put that thing down before you hurt me with it!

Organist · Senior Member

I might tell the police officer that that thing is a reflex hammer, a very useful tool of the physician, but it is also a way to knock sense into those that don't agree with me.

Edited: I found a smaller one that is less frightening, if you consider tomahawks with pointy edges on the other side less frightening. This is the kind I use.

-- Edited by Organist at 12:01, 2008-05-08

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Oh, yeah. I've totally seen those things before.

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

Yeah, that other one looked like some sort of, um, probe.

mirkwood · Senior Bucketkeeper

Organist wrote:

I might tell the police officer that that thing is a reflex hammer, a very useful tool of the physician, but it is also a way to knock sense into those that don't agree with me.

You mean something like this:

ASP

deadhorse

beefche · Profuse Pontificator

You just tickle people with that, right mirk? biggrin