Lonelygirl15

kjones wrote:ok I agree it's not life threatening but, it's still serious enough that she might put someone else's welfare above her own.

imogene2004 wrote:
Yeah I got the sarcasm the second time I read it, I read through the comments too fast sometimes. I should really reread before I post sometimes .

ShardinsKitten wrote:

kjones wrote:ok I agree it's not life threatening but, it's still serious enough that she might put someone else's welfare above her own.

if it got infected, a serious infection, that didn't get taken care of it could become life threatening. Though at the current state it wasn't... but how many people have clean screw drivers?? So it could have headed there.

An ethicist's commentary on when a veterinarian can render medical assistance to people

Bernard E. Rollin, PhD





This question is actually dual, legal and ethical. Not being a legal scholar, I will deal primarily with the latter, though legal ramifications of intervening must enter into one's moral reasoning. Exposure to liability in virtue of helping someone has been limited in many jurisdictions by Good Samaritan laws, which protect those who offer assistance of various sorts to people in trouble. The protection provided by these laws is consonant with common sense and protects the Samaritan's right to provide first aid, CPR, and minimal medical assistance that many people are likely to have mastered. It certainly would not protect me if, without cardiac surgical training of any sort, I cracked a chest and administered heart massage.

What the Good Samaritan laws seem to say ethically, is that citizens should not be discouraged from helping others at a rudimentary level commensurate with their expertise by fear of liability. This sounds like a reasonable moral position. We don't want a society where fear of a lawsuit prevents its members from helping one another.

When the Good Samaritan is a person who is medically trained, albeit not a physician, I would think that morally, the public is entitled to expect more in the way of emergency assistance than it expects of an ordinary citizen. The more training and experience in managing that sort of emergency, the more the public is entitled to expect. Thus a military medical corpsman or a veterinarian, both trained to control bleeding, could be expected to accomplish hemostasis in an emergency. Veterinary training for the first 2 years of veterinary school is virtually identical to that of human medical training. At one point, the State of Wyoming considered creating a medical school and training the medical students for their first 2 years at the Colorado State University (CSU) College of Veterinary Medicine. In fact, a graduate of a veterinary school is likely to have more training in surgery than does a medical school graduate.

Given that tissue is tissue and bleeding is bleeding, I would think that a veterinarian facing a laceration emergency with a human could be morally expected — and permitted — to treat the emergency.

The same reasoning should be applicable on a case to case basis, and moral obligation to help, as it were, titrated on the basis of expertise. An academic veterinary heart surgeon with 40 years of experience who has worked in human hospitals during sabbatical leaves is probably more competent to help in the situation described in this case than a physician dermatologist or recent medical school graduate. If the law does not currently embody this insight, it should be modified to do so.

In the spirit of our discussion, Dean Lance Perryman of the CSU College of Veterinary Medicine has made a novel suggestion. He has raised the possibility that, in rural areas deficient in physicians, veterinarians could undergo some additional training analogous to physicians' assistants, in order to provide rudimentary medical care in such communities. In fact, this already occurs de facto in some rural areas where veterinarians treat their clients' cuts and even fractures.

In sum, as regards the case in question, the veterinarian may morally provide emergency help, provided that he or she does not exceed his or her training and comfort level.

I am grateful to Ralph Switzer for dialogue.

Chelseyrl wrote: Hahaha I love your new avatar

TheFatLady wrote:

kjones wrote:ok I agree it's not life threatening but, it's still serious enough that she might put someone else's welfare above her own.

And furthermore, it's a long way from the Bree who kept having to talked OUT of doing things that we all thought were insanely risky. I don't quite get the change in her character; on the one hand, she's being more careful, which indicates a wiser self, and on the other hand, she's just as stupid/unwise as ever, what with tying Jonas up and basically flappiing around wondering what to do next.

So is she getting smarter, or not?

bethy wrote:An ethicist's commentary on when a veterinarian can render medical assistance to people:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=340065

michiev wrote:

kjones wrote:ok I agree it's not life threatening but, it's still serious enough that she might put someone else's welfare above her own.

Can you BLAME bree for acting this way? shes scared of being found by the order, you were never chased by a secret order trying to get you to do a ceremony ;o...so basically you would probably act the same way if you were.

kellylen wrote:we never truly know how much a video adds to a plot until we see the next video, so i think we shouldnt comment on the relevance of the video until then.

bethy wrote:An ethicist's commentary on when a veterinarian can render medical assistance to people:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=340065

Onewen wrote:From the article:
In sum, as regards the case in question, the veterinarian may morally provide emergency help, provided that he or she does not exceed his or her training and comfort level.

So, I guess it was ok for them to go to the vet...but I am still curious as to what plot development will come from that decision...if a hospital could be a link to the Order, why not the vet?? Ok, that sounded lame! haha

Lurker wrote:It just occurs to me that none of us have commented on the acting in this one yet. Good job to everybody involved. They all seemed to handle it quite well (though I wonder about the one part where Jess looked at the camera; wasn't she supposed to be holding it?).

Yousef pulled off being shocked and concerned very well. Jess did a good job with Bree's whole... I'm not sure what to call it. That thing Bree does. And Jackson did a great job as somebody in a lot of pain. Especially look at his arm and how tense it was. Great job there. He really got into it.

kellylen wrote:we never truly know how much a video adds to a plot until we see the next video, so i think we shouldnt comment on the relevance of the video until then.

Good statement. Cool shirt too (clarification for when somebody reads this after you change your avatar: it's in the avatar).

bethy wrote:An ethicist's commentary on when a veterinarian can render medical assistance to people:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=340065

That sounds like what I was thinking (good job finding that, and thanks to Bernard E. Rollin, PhD). So under the good samaritan thing a vet could offer assistance in a life-threatening emergency (probably). I'm thinking in this case they could only do something for the bleeding.

Onewen wrote:From the article:
In sum, as regards the case in question, the veterinarian may morally provide emergency help, provided that he or she does not exceed his or her training and comfort level.

So, I guess it was ok for them to go to the vet...but I am still curious as to what plot development will come from that decision...if a hospital could be a link to the Order, why not the vet?? Ok, that sounded lame! haha

Dr. Rollin was describing a proposed scenario.

Lurker wrote:

kellylen wrote:we never truly know how much a video adds to a plot until we see the next video, so i think we shouldnt comment on the relevance of the video until then.

Good statement. Cool shirt too (clarification for when somebody reads this after you change your avatar: it's in the avatar).