Saturday, March 14, 2009


Life or Death


Below is a scenario based on true events, modified slightly to give the reader a dilemma.

2 patients are admitted to the emergency department. One fell from height while working. One fell from a (failed) attempt at suicide. Both are grievously injured*. Their vital signs have been temporary stabilised, but they will probably die in hours without surgery. There is only one operating theater available currently. Who will you choose to operate on first?

(*when I say "grievously injured" I mean grievously. Forget your hollywood gore flicks, they dun even imagine half of what we see.)

I was really aghast, and disgusted even, when someone commented that he would choose the one that was injured at work to save first, because the other guy deserves it. To top it up, he even said that he would go as far as to fake the working guy's vital signs so that he looked that he was in a poorer condition, so that he might be saved first.

We have no right to judge.

Patients are admitted to the hospital to be treated, not to be judged. True, doctors are humans too. We have our own feelings, our own subjective views of things, BUT we must try as hard as possible to not allow them to cloud our clinical decisions. We are doctors, not judges. We do not get to decide who lives and who dies. That is not within our duties. The society has not accorded us that power.

No matter what the patient has done, no matter what background he/she came from, we must still discharge our responsibilities dutifully, to the best of our abilities. True, this may only be an ideal, but it should be an ideal that we all try to strive for.

Perhaps a simple guideline would be "do unto others as you would have others do unto you". Who knows, someday you might be at the other end of the stethoscope/scalpel.

posted by nwxiang at 2:15 AM |


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