Reality of life
I was just watching a documentary about the life on an aircraft carrier just now when I remembered what I learnt more than 10 years ago. One of the segments on the show was about how they fight fire on the carrier and they had a firedrill.. So you have the usual smoke and people screaming for help with their burns and wounds.
The screaming and wounded made me recalled what I went thru when I was in the Outdoor Activities Club (ODAC) long ago. Medical knowledge is important to the members as you only have yourself to depend for help when you are in the jungle, so we make sure all our people get the basic knowledge. This includes dressing for wounds and how to react to situations if people are bitten by animals, etc.
For the final test for my juniors, we had a mock event where the juniors are caught in an airplane crash and they are to react on the situation based on their initiative and rescue as many people as possible. Sort of like the show LOST.
Well, we seniors are the wounded and the dead or just the hysterical. It was quite fun for us but the result was more educational than I thought.
During the debrief, my medical chief told us some facts.
(1) You can’t save all the people. You can’t save the people who are dying, so move on.
(2) Ignore people who are hysterical, move on to the wounded.
(3) Save the wounded who can be saved.
Years later, I read somewhere that in the professional medical business, eg. ambulence, hospital.. during an emergency where medical people are shorthanded, wounded people are classfied into three main categories. Red, Green and Yellow.
Red
Those cannot be saved. No matter how much effort you put in, these people are either dead or going to die, so move on, ignore them, don’t waste time on them. (eg, massive lost of blood, serious head injuries)
Green
These people are alright, usually they are just hysterical, or their wounds are non critical, so they can be ignored for now. (eg. screaming people, arms broken).
Yellow
For these, the medical people have to evaluate that the wounds on these people are treatable, that they will live if they are treated in time and so forth. They will spend more time on these people as they have a higher chance of surviving.
I am not sure how true for this in Singapore. We don’t really have such a medical emergency where staff are really shorthanded. The latest medical situation was SARS and that doesn’t seems like an urgent medical emergency which the doctors have to evaluate on the spot who to save. Anyone knows?
yeah my sister tells me those “code red” things, too. i guess it’s true but also very harsh. Like if there’s a fire, you shouldn’t go in to save those who are hopelessly locked in anyways, they are already “red” people.
Say there is a massive pileup on the expressway. All the doctors don’t all rush out at once to deal with the wounded from the road traffic accident, because the rest of the hospital does not stop, and there still are other sick people around to worry about.
We do categorise patients in order of the severity of their problem. But we never ignore patients.
People with non-urgent problems may have to wait, but they will be getting supportive treatment - like bandages or painkillers or simple slings, because it doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to do those things.
People who are going to die will also be getting such treatment - it doesn’t take more than a minute to put an IV line in and rig up a morphine pump or a bag of fluids. They may not have priority to enter the intensive care unit or go for emergency surgery, but it doesn’t mean we leave them in pain or without oxygen or make an effort to staunch blood flow.
It’s called Triage-ing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage
And Singapore would practice it in times of a mass emergency too.
http://www.sgh.com.sg/ForDoctorsnHealthcareProfessionals/EducationandTraining/InstituteofAdvancedNursing/ConferencesandCourses/TriageOfficerTC.htm
Anon scaredycat?
Another name for anonymous coward? HAhaha!
Well it’s the sad fact of life. If you try too hard to save those with severe injuries, those who might survive might get infection or whatever, which will kill them as well. Times like this, there’s no time to lose.
one of the reasosn why sometimes i wana be in a profession where i can save lives but at the same time i dont think i have the courage to face it