JEMS Talk: Ethics, Education and EMS: Calibrating a Moral Compass

Hear an important JEMS Talk on ethics in emergency medical services and mobile medicine.

Items Discussed

• The belief that field clinicians can/should be trusted to make ethical and moral decisions.

• Are we educating clinicians on how to make such assessments, or are we training clinicians to paint by number/practice by rote protocol?

• Are “thinking” vs. a scientifically informed, protocolized approach mutually exclusive—or can they inform one another?

• Are we training clinicians to develop their moral compasses?

• What happens when science suggests that the moral or ethical thing to do is the suboptimal choice (and by what yardstick is that judged)?

Panelists

Christopher Colwell, MD; chief of Emergency Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco (CA) General Hospital and Trauma Center

Michael Dailey, MD; director of Prehospital Care Services & Education at Albany (NY) Medical Center

Abby Dotson, PHD; executive director at the National POLST Collaborative, director of the Oregon POLST Registry

Jonathon Feit, MBA; co-founder and chief executive of Beyond Lucid Technologies, Inc.

Keep the conversation going by using #JEMSTalk on social media.