Week 5 Discussion 1
“Emergency Situations” Please respond to the following:
- Suppose you work in a hospital that just received twelve patients from a disaster event in your community. Your hospital is able to treat and provide necessary surgical services to those that require surgery. However, five patients are refusing care and requesting to be transferred to another hospital for the same services. Suggest the course of action that the hospital should take to meet the standards of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) related to public health in your community. Provide at least two (2) specific examples to support your rationale.
- Imagine that an unidentified individual with a gunshot wound has been transported to the emergency room. After taking the victim into surgery, the medical team realizes the individual is a minor. Examine the kind of consent that the team should obtain, and determine the resources that they could utilize in order to obtain this consent.
Answer preview
Before treatment and medical evaluation of minors, parental consent is generally required. In some instances, children and adolescents need treatments during some emergencies, and the parent or legal guardians are unavailable to provide consent. During such times, any medical care that can prevent imminent danger to the patient’s life should not be delayed because there is no consent. In this case of a minor with a gunshot wound, the doctors must ensure that the initial treatment required to stabilize the condition of the minor patient is rendered even in the absence of consent (Committee on Bioethics, 2016). The medical staff is empowered by EMTALA to initiate treatments even without parental permission in times of emergencies. Saving the life of the patient must always be the priority; afterward, the patient’s identity should
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