Friday, August 18, 2006
Pallimed goes on vacation; Katrina charges
I am travelling the upcoming week: my first family vacation with a baby in tow. Will likely post next in about a week's time.
Pat Malone, a nurse in Seattle, tried to leave these comments on the blog about the Katrina charges--blogspot apparently wasn't cooperating at the time so I told her I'd post her comments:
I am a nurse and I wanted to add an opinion to your blog but had trouble with the site.
I am very concerned about the arrests in New Orleans and how this will play out for the Palliative Care community. I think all of us need to be very clear to separate routine end of life care and disaster planning. This is a case of poor disaster planning on the part of the city, state and federal governments and our nursing and medical associations.
There are no standards for what to do in this kind of situation. Period. If we have a flu pandemic, for instance, we know we may not have enough ICU space and ventilators for everybody. We learned from the Katrina victims that we are not prepared and we will learn from this case that we have no standards. What do you do when you can't save everybody? We are naïve in this country.
I think one way to avoid this spilling over into setting better standards for routine end of life care is to communicate that separation. This was a case of poor disaster planning. End of life care during a disaster needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed in the disaster planning arena.
Thanks for your blog and your work.
Happy August to all,
Drew
