Question

What were the moral dilemmas faced by the doctors in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina? What did they decide to do? And do you believe they made the correct ethical choice? If not, what should’ve they done?

Answer 1

In the late summer of 2005, the waters loosed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina laid siege to New Orleans. At Memorial Medical Center, the power and then the backup generators failed, creating a silence one doctor described as the “sickest sound” of his life. Doctors and nurses, at times in darkness, struggled to take care of patients without life-saving machines, air conditioning, or functioning toilets. After several days of desperation, some allegedly euthanized critically ill patients, even as large-scale evacuations of the hospital began.

As the waters surged toward Memorial, hospital leaders began by acting with familiar priorities: they chose to evacuate the sickest patients and those who relied on ventilators or other devices first. But then the medical chairman decided that patients with do-not-resuscitate orders should get lowest priority, later saying he thought they had the “least to lose.” As the staff scrambled to move patients down from the upper floors, other factors played a role. One doctor worried that a patient who weighed more than three hundred pounds might slow the evacuation line; he was moved to another area to wait, rather than joining the queue. Some patients on the seventh floor seemed to get even lower priority, in part because their treatment was overseen by LifeCare, a health-care company that leased space within Memorial. As the days passed and doctors soldiered on without electricity, running water, sleep, or outside help, they flipped their moral scale upside down. Now the sickest patients—whom they designated threes on a one-to-three scale—would wait, and the healthiest would go first.

There are moments when doctors face genuinely tough calls about whether to let someone live or die: a soldier on a battlefield, say, who begs a doctor not to leave him behind alive.

Physicians were placed under time pressure and were forced to make rushed decisions, many that they did not have time fully deliberate or evaluate. Resources were limited, not all relevant parties could be involved in the decision-making process, and individuals were physically andmentally fatigued.

In my opinion in the case of emergency they where having no other choices or time , there decision was right, other than that in that situation what they will do.