[Sent – 3 August 2019 to the 170+ surgeons et al of our Surgical Ethics (Education) Consortium]
Greetings from St. Louis and WashU. For my ‘Surgical Ethics Education Resources -- #20’ communication, I am sharing the first few slides from a set of slides I developed a decade or so ago when I was added to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital working group that had been tasked with updating/revising the hospital’s mass casualty preparation plan. My assignment was to facilitate discussion of the ethical challenges associated responding to a mass casualty event. I subsequently used the set of slides in several ethics education conferences. The first slide sets out three educational objectives. The second slide draws attention to the language frequently heard during a mass casualty event as a way to demonstrate the paradigm shift is indeed difficult. The next four slides present surgery and emergency medicine resident responses to four questions. I have found that presenting the responses to each question quickly opens illuminating and at times intense exchanges re the reasoning that leads to differing responses. I welcome your feedback and would be pleased to learn about other discussion starters you have found to be effective for probing the ethical challenges associated with mass casualty events. Doug
