[Tina Vaillancourt]

1. A small group of doctors decided to meet on Wednesday morning to discuss the decision by hospital leaders to discontinue the helicopter rescue the night before. They were not convinced that the evacuation plans that were in place would be fast enough or effective. Rather than wait until the scheduled morning meeting where evacuation operations were going to be discussed, they decided to have Dr. Walsh and an anesthesiologist leave on a fishing boat at first light to try an organize a more concerted rescue effort. The doctors basically opted for insubordination over inaction because they wanted to re-triage the patients who remained.
2. It is clear that Dr. Deichmann is opposed to any suggestions regarding euthanasia. He is focused on getting as many patients to the rescue boats as possible and the thought of euthanasia seems to never cross his mind. Susan Mulderick, on the other hand, seemed to be focused on the comfort measures that could be taken so that the sickest patients weren’t aware of the plight they were in. Dr. Pou likened the patients to her terminally ill cancer patients and seemed to be a proponent of ending their lives is what she thought was the most humane way possible. Dr. Cook seemed to think it was impossible to evacuate the chronically ill patients and he took the position that they were going to die anyway thus the decision was made to euthanize them. Personally, I hope to God that I am never in a position where I am forced to make these types of decisions because there really does not seem to be any right answer. While I certainly do not blame any of the doctors for the choices that they made, I would tend to align more with Dr. Deichmann. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20 but people and pets were euthanized when they could have potentially been saved.

3. Tensions seemed to rise because some people were more concerned about caring for pets than the patients. Dr. Mulderick in particular seemed to resent the fact that so much attention was being placed on how to care for the animals. I do think euthanizing the pets made it easier for some of the people to accept euthanizing patients because the thought process of ending suffering was the same. However, I think for most people the decision to put down the animals did not impact the decision to euthanize patients because I think the majority of people recognized a difference between animal and human life.

4. As the last patients were leaving Memorial Hospital I felt frustrated more than anything. I am sure that, for the people who went through this, it seemed like there was no end in sight but at the end of the day many people and animals did not survive and they could have. The disaster really demonstrated the lack of leadership within the hospital and the city. I feel like every patient should have been evacuated if possible and that is obviously not what happened.

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