Tag: patient care

an ambulance parked at the entrance of an emergency department

Psychiatric Care in Crisis

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Zainab Ahmed

Psychiatric care in the Emergency Department is all-or-nothing and never enough. Often, legal holds are the only intervention available, and they rarely are therapeutic. Upon discharge, our patients are, once again, on their own.

The ED acts as a safety-net for a failing health system, one that places little value on mental health services, either preventative or follow-up. The demand for acute psychiatric care is high; however, EDs have little physical capacity for psychiatric patients.

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Empty hospital bed.

Do No Harm: A Call for Decarceration in Hospitals

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Zainab Ahmed

In an era of mass suffering, some still suffer more than others. What’s worse, there is nothing natural about it. It is human made.

As an emergency medicine resident at a large academic hospital in Los Angeles, I see how incarcerated patients’ suffering is sanctioned by hospitals and medical professionals, despite their pledge to do no harm.

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hospital equipment, including heart rate monitor and oxygen monitor functioning at bedside.

The Ethical Allocation of Scarce Resources in the US During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Bioethics

Beatrice Brown Leave a comment

By Beatrice Brown

Critical resources for handling the COVID-19 pandemic, including ventilators and ICU beds, are quickly becoming scarce in the US as the number and density of infections continue to rise. Leading bioethicists have crafted guidelines for the ethical rationing of these scarce resources during the pandemic. On March 16, The Hastings Center published “Ethical Framework for Health Care Institutions and Guidelines for Institutional Ethics Services Responding to the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic,” detailing three ethical duties for health care leaders: 1) duty to plan; 2) duty to safeguard; and 3) duty to guide. The report also contains a compilation of materials on resource and ventilator allocation.

More recently, on March 23, two insightful pieces were published in the New England Journal of Medicine: “The Toughest Triage — Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic” by Truog, Mitchell, and Daley, and “Fair Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources in the Time of Covid-19” by Emanuel et al. These two pieces complement each other well and lay a crucial foundation for the inevitable resource allocation that clinicians and hospitals will be forced to practice in the coming weeks. As such, here, I summarize the central takeaways from these two articles while understanding their recommendations in tandem, as well as reflect on the importance of bioethics during these times of medical crisis and how the work of this field must adapt to changing circumstances. Read More

TeleSitters are entering hospital rooms. How will they change patient care?

Adriana Krasniansky Leave a comment

By Adriana Krasniansky

In many medical circumstances, clinicians and caregivers may choose not to leave a patient alone. For example, a patient may present a fall risk, experience confusion and agitation, or be at risk of self-harm.  Traditionally, in such situations, a hospital assigns the patient a sitter, or a caregiver who provides patients patient supervision and companionship. 

The need for sitters in hospital settings is rising, as patient loads increase and fewer patients have family members who are able to stay with them for long periods of time. Sitters are also a considerable investment for hospitals; one community hospital reported employing 14 sitters a day, totaling $425,000 in costs annually. Many healthcare networks are exploring the possibility of TeleSitters, or virtual monitoring systems to support patient care. In this article, we review the national adoption of TeleSitters and point out benefits and considerations to their implementation.  Read More