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RE: Can I be sued for saving someone's life? Yes I can
July 13, 2015 at 9:04 pm
(July 13, 2015 at 8:47 pm)excitedpenguin Wrote:
(July 12, 2015 at 10:45 pm)Dystopia Wrote:
Imagine the following scenario:
I'm a doctor working at the ER and a patient comes in, his life is at stake and in desperate need of a blood transfusion.
When I'm about to order the nurses to start the whole procedure and perform the transfusion to save the patient's life, he proudly says "I'm a Jehovah's witness, I don't accept blood transfusions". He then faints and his life is slipping away.
Scared about the situation, but committed to fulfill my ethics of preserving and saving human lives at all cost, I still perform the transfusion, hoping that the person would regret later or at least I'll feel like a better person because I didn't allow someone to die in vain.
The patient wakes up, realizes his life has been wrongly saved, and acknowledges he's going to hell. He then sues me for doing my job. That's right, I am being used for saving someone's life, for following my ethics code and not allowing another human being to die.
Niceness aside, this is just idiotic. People have the right to be mad for getting their lives saved, but should a capable doctor be suspended, fire and ruin his career because a religionist decided he couldn't have his life? I find this very confusing.
I'm sure this story has happened many times, but it was first narrated to me by a professor of criminal law last year during a lecture - He was called early in the morning to go to the hospital because he was in charge of the legal penal stuff related to consenting into surgeries, transfusions and other medical procedures when people have reasons to oppose it. The way he told the story and how it felt looking at a man's eyes, suffering in pain and agony until the last minute, but to everyone's despair the last words were "No!".
To think this actually happens is disturbing. But it gets worse, some people want their children to not have blood transfusions.
This isn't an argument as much as getting something off my chest because I find it sad and sick. How does society lead with this and people literally being sued for saving others' life?
If someone wishes to end their own life, they can and should be allowed to do so.
Or, rather not, not really, but it would be too difficult to change every crazy person's mind about this so as to make them not suffer for not being allowed to do it or in order to prevent their killing themselves once they're left unsupervised[when talking about a non-religious type of decision to effectively end one's life].
This is a gray area, naturally. Are you not going to allow a person in a great deal of pain the right to end their own life? Some might argue even a religious person might have the moral highground in suing the doctor in this situation, since, for them at least, their religious ideas mean too much to be ignored in extreme circumstances like the one described.
A fantastic movie touching on the fringes of this dilemma[not inclusive of a religious scenario] is Amour (2012 film). I recommend it very highly.
On my medical chart I have DNR order in place under certain circumstances (I won't go into those for personal reasons) so, if those particular circumstances arise, the attending doctor knows I would rather stay dead.
