Violating notion that all people are of equal worth

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Reference no: EM132196341

Answer the following questions when you read the case study below

1) Does a first-come, first served criterion require that Cox receive the surgery?

2) Can the different chances of a successful outcome in each case be used as a criterion without violating the notion that all people are of equal worth?

3) Should the fact that Cox's injury is he consequence of his own negligence be considered in determining who should get priority for surgery?

4) In your view, which patient should have the potential benefits of the surgery? Give reasons to support your view.

CASE STUDY

Read the Decision Scenario 1 - First Come, First Served

The microsurgical team at Benton Public Hospital consisted of twenty-three people. Five were surgeons, three were anesthesiologists, three were internists, two were radiologists, and the remaining members were various sorts of nurses and technicians. Early Tuesday afternoon on a date late in March, the members of the team that had to be sterile were scrubbing while the others were preparing to start operating on Mr. Hammond Cox. Mr. Cox was a fifty-nine-year-old unmarried African American who worked as a janitor in a large apartment building. While performing his duties, Mr. Cox had caught his hand in the mechanism of a commercial trash compactor. The bones of his wrist had been crushed and blood vessels severed. The head of the team, Dr. Herbert Lagorio, believed it was possible to restore at least partial functioning to Cox's hand. Otherwise, the hand would have to be amputated. Mr. Cox had been drunk when it happened. When the police ambulance brought him to the emergency room, he was still so drunk that a decision was made to delay surgery for almost an hour to give him a chance to burn up some of the alcohol he had consumed. As it was, administering anesthesia to Mr. Cox would incur a greater-than-average risk. Furthermore, blood tests had shown that Mr. Cox already suffered from some degree of liver damage. In both short- and long-range terms, Mr. Cox was not a terribly good surgical risk. Dr. Lagorio was already scrubbed when Dr. Carol Levine, a resident in emergency medicine, had him paged. "This had better be important," he told her. "I've got a patient prepped and waiting." "I know," Dr. Levine said. "But they just brought in a thirty-five-year-old white female with a totally severed right hand. She's a biology professor at Columbia and was working late in her lab when some maniac looking for drugs came in and attacked her with a cleaver." "What shape is the hand in?" "Excellent. The campus cops were there within minutes, and there was ice in the lab. One of the cops had the good sense to put the hand in a plastic bag and bring it with her." "Is she in good general health?" "It seems excellent," Dr. Levine said. "This is a real problem." "You can't do two cases at once?" "No way. We need everybody we've got to do one." "How about sending her someplace else?" "No place else is set up to do what has to be done." "So what are you going to do?"

Reference no: EM132196341

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