At 68 years of age, Emmett Everett Sr. was still full of joy and had a great sense of humor. He was waiting for a relatively simple surgery to solve a non-lethal problem. It shall never be known how the surgery would have turned out because before it could be done, clinical officers unilaterally and intentionally overdosed him with morphine and he died. This is one perspective of the story with the second perspective sounding quite different. Emmett Everett Sr. is a 68-year-old paraplegic man, weighing in excess of 380 lbs. and stuck on the top floors of a hospital building (Fink, 2009). This is in the middle of Hurricane Katrina and the hospital has lacked basic amenities including power. The unit is also operating under a skeleton staff. The other patients in the other units had been moved and during the evacuation, many of them died painfully due to the difficulties associated with the movement. Time is running out and Everett’s clinical team cannot tell for a fact if rescue will come in time or if when they come, Everett will survive the evacuation (Fink, 2009). They make the hard decision to euthanize him and save him from imminent and inevitable misery. Dr. Anna Pou and her team are either heroes or villains depending on the perspective that the auditor would give preference.
In determining which perspective to give preference, it is fundamental not to look at the case based on the 2017 scenario but rather the 2005 scenario. This does not regard the medical profession or the practice of nursing but rather the nature of the American consumer. The American consumer is now stuck in the middle of the information age. The consumer knows or aspires to know everything and also craves for any and all information. The creation of the information age can mainly be credited to social media networks key among them Facebook and Twitter. In 2005, Facebook had just been registered and was busy finding its feet. Twitter was unheard of as it had its advent in 2006. The doctors and nurses in Hurricane Katrina were not dealing with today’s consumer of medical services but rather the then consumer. The 2005 consumer did not know much and did not want to know much either unless it was good news.
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The seemingly verbose argument about the differences between 2005 and 2017 are most applicable when it comes to patient autonomy. Patient autonomy is the concept that a patient or the patient’s loved ones should be involved in every decision being made with regard to the health and well-being of the patient. In this regard, therefore, any major and/or adverse procedures undertaken upon a patient without the express permission of the patient is illegal and wrong. The patient must also be well informed about the available options and their implications under the concept of informed consent (Vaughn, 2014). Theory and practice must be considered as entirely different things based on expediency and practicality. For example, when an emergency happens during a surgery, the medical team has to make a decision on the heat of the moment and may not have time to consult the patient or the loved one. Further, emotions may make it impossible for the patient or the family to make rational decisions. Under near-impossible circumstances, it is the obligation of the professional to save the patient even from the very patient. This is the concept of paternalism (Vaughn, 2014). The doctors in the instant scenario were not infringing on the patient's autonomy but rather saving them from making the wrong decision as they could see the outcomes more clearly.
A good person may be forced to do a bad thing for the right reasons. Based on how well known the character of the good person is, their goodness can be used to determine whether or not what they did was good or bad. This is the focus of virtue ethics. It is an area of ethics that looks at the character of the actor rather than the act itself (Vaughn, 2014). For example, if a thief breaks into all the houses in a block except one, it would be hard to imagine that the thief was overcome by benignancy towards that family thus saving their house. It would have to be assumed that thieves are selfish by nature and not breaking into the house must have a selfish motive. Applying this to the instant case, the doctors who handled patients at the Memorial Medical Center when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans were no ordinary medical practitioners. Many of their colleagues had elected to save their own lives and run away when they realized how bad the hurricane was going to be. Dr. Anna Pou and her team made a rational decision to stick around and help patients at the risk of their own lives (Fink, 2009). This tells a lot about their character and how attached they are to their work and their patients. Under virtues ethics, it would be inconceivable that such individuals of high character and moral standing would maliciously elect to kill patients. Based on virtue ethics, their character alone is enough evidence that they did what needed to be done and were, therefore, right.
Utilitarianism is a philosophical concept that falls under the ethical theory of consequentialism. Consequentialism considers whether or not an action is right based on the consequences thereof and not the action itself. Under utilitarianism, an action is right if its consequences create aggregate pleasure (Vaughn, 2014). The idea of aggregate pleasure is based on the fact that an action can bring some good and some bad. If the good is greater than the bad, then the action was right. If the bad is greater than the good, then the action is considered as wrong. Another more modern way of looking at good and bad in the consequences of an action is to use numbers. An action that brings good to more people than it brings bad to must be good. Act utilitarianism assesses the outcomes themselves and gauges good or bad based purely on the outcomes (Vaughn, 2014). This is as opposed to rule utilitarianism which considers the basis for the action that creates the good. A driver whose bus has lost its brakes may decide to ram into a wall to save the lives of those on board without endangering other road users. Under act utilitarianism, the driver’s action was right if the lives are saved. Under rule utilitarianism, the driver’s action was right, even ig an unexpected contingency such as an explosion leads to disaster.
When applied to the case, Dr. Anna Pou and her team were aware of the situation in New Orleans and the magnitude of the rescue effort necessary as compared to the rescue apparatus available (Fink, 2009). They knew that struggling to save one life at the hospital that will not be saved anyway will be taking away the opportunity for saving hundreds if not thousands of people out there who actually stood a chance. It might never really be known but the facilities that may have been used to save Dr. Anna Pou’s patients who may not have stood a chance anyway did save countless lives out there. There might be hundreds of people out there who are alive because of the actions of the doctor and her team. She might be said to have committed murder, but only by those who refuse to consider all the perspectives of her actions.
References
Fink, S. (2009, August 25). Strained by Katrina, a hospital faced deadly choices . Retrieved October 21, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html?pagewanted=all
Vaughn, L. (2013). Bioethics: principles, issues, and cases . New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0-19-979623-6
