Question

Be able to list and explain why alternate standards of care should be part of ethics-based planning for disasters

Answer 1

Disasters are acute and unpredictable situations that cause excessive and extensive suffering, damage, and destruction. These disasters cannot be handled with by the local people on their own. The concerned people handling disasters often find a sort of “ethical frustration” meanwhile making ethical decisions during the disaster times.

The ethical practices tend to provide stability in a quickly changing and increasing complicated world. In comparison to “day-to-day emergencies”, disasters are known for their relative lack of time. People try to manage things quickly with which they are not familiar and this creates a stressful environment.

Alternate care facilities are important in the ethics based planning for disasters. Most of the plans comprise of strategies that aim to provide “non-critical care” outside the healthcare settings to free up maximum hospital beds for more critical patients. This includes “formal and pre-planned facilities” which are available for most of the time and “convertible public spaces” including meeting halls, places of worship, schools and hotels.

These facilities are major parts of non-clinical care, however, they raise certain questions reflecting crisis standards of care. This is so because of the different staffing levels in such facilities, less number of volunteers and care providers practicing other duties. The larger and more complex healthcare networks are likely to be with resources to invest on “disaster preparedness”. However, this suitable approach runs conflicting to the real nature of responses to such medical emergencies.