You may hear people criticizing Drs and Nurses in the New Orleans disaster because they seemed to follow strange rules about triage with disaster patients.
Usually triage means the injured are sorted so that the most seriously hurt people are treated first, the walking wounded, last.
But in a major disaster when too many are hurt and the resources we have to work with are limited, we have to sort people by according to their ability to survive. If a person is not going to make it regardless of what we can do, he or she is assigned to an Aide or lay person to just give as much comfort as is possible. It means if there are limited supplies of IV fluids or medicines, the dying person may not be given any when there isn’t enough to go around. I met some very brave people who understood this. Men and women who refused help until I took care of an injured child they didn’t even know. If you use oxygen, you would have been in a bad way. We ran out early. No one got any..
If it’s your loved one we seem to be neglecting, you can imagine you might be very upset and want to fight with me. We actually used a modified approach and took care of everyone as well as we could with what we had. Remember we were working with out rest 72 hrs or more at a stretch.
We evacuated everyone we heard about and could get to.
Many people especially VIPs didn’t see things our way. We had several arguements with the Feds about who were more important to be helped.
As you know there was a lot of abuse and I do believe there was a difference between how well you got help based on whether you were poor of black. I promise you I have never and will never discriminate this way.
So if you hear about the way we sorted people, I hope you understand we just did what we could with what we had untill supplies or the number of professionals got better. I watched more than one doc or nurse collapse from the heat and exhaustion.
One politician threatened a doctor with the worse that could be done to his license, his life, his family, and whatever because he refused to leave a critical patient and attend to lesser injuries of his lady friend.
But a lot of neighborhoods set up their own help and took care of one another. Seeing that made me feel good.
Usually triage means the injured are sorted so that the most seriously hurt people are treated first, the walking wounded, last.
But in a major disaster when too many are hurt and the resources we have to work with are limited, we have to sort people by according to their ability to survive. If a person is not going to make it regardless of what we can do, he or she is assigned to an Aide or lay person to just give as much comfort as is possible. It means if there are limited supplies of IV fluids or medicines, the dying person may not be given any when there isn’t enough to go around. I met some very brave people who understood this. Men and women who refused help until I took care of an injured child they didn’t even know. If you use oxygen, you would have been in a bad way. We ran out early. No one got any..
If it’s your loved one we seem to be neglecting, you can imagine you might be very upset and want to fight with me. We actually used a modified approach and took care of everyone as well as we could with what we had. Remember we were working with out rest 72 hrs or more at a stretch.
We evacuated everyone we heard about and could get to.
Many people especially VIPs didn’t see things our way. We had several arguements with the Feds about who were more important to be helped.
As you know there was a lot of abuse and I do believe there was a difference between how well you got help based on whether you were poor of black. I promise you I have never and will never discriminate this way.
So if you hear about the way we sorted people, I hope you understand we just did what we could with what we had untill supplies or the number of professionals got better. I watched more than one doc or nurse collapse from the heat and exhaustion.
One politician threatened a doctor with the worse that could be done to his license, his life, his family, and whatever because he refused to leave a critical patient and attend to lesser injuries of his lady friend.
But a lot of neighborhoods set up their own help and took care of one another. Seeing that made me feel good.