The Annals of Emergency Medicine will soon be publishing the following article:
The Ethics of Using the Recently Deceased to Instruct Residents in Cricothyrotomy by Dr. Andrew Makowski
In light of past experiences, and in the context of my “other” occupation as a clinical ethicist, I posted a link on Twitter and got this response from Dr. Casey Parker, of BroomeDocs.com:
@EMIMDoc@MDaware@AnnalsofEM really? Is this a thing in the U.S.?? Even intubation on the newly dead is frowned upon down here
— Casey Parker (@broomedocs) January 21, 2015
Followed by this, from Dr. Seth Trueger:
@broomedocs @EMIMDoc @AnnalsofEM I’ve never heard of it. doesn’t seem kosher.
— Seth Trueger (@MDaware) January 21, 2015
This led to a few more thoughts from some very smart people on Twitter. See the full conversation, Storified, here.
Now, although I was happy to read the piece and felt that Dr. Makowski really did a great job of getting down to the key issues, I’ve begun to wonder. How common is the practice of performing invasive procedures on recently deceased patients in the Emergency Department? Have you seen this happen? Heard of it? Ever participated?
Please help us out by taking a minute to respond to this short poll (also embedded below). It’s just my attempt to get a sense of how the EM and Critical Care communities – at least those who are online – feel about the question.
Thank you!
~David
~Many thanks to Dr’s Parker and Truger who took the time to give the survey a once-over prior to release.
If you have any trouble with the embedded form, just follow this link: http://goo.gl/forms/5CXxmDMXpC – please share with your friends!
The poll will be accepting responses until Feb. 6 at 23:59, US ET (GMT-5).
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