The Ethical Dilemmas Involved In Accordance With The EMT Code Of Medical Ethics

In accordance with the EMT Code of Ethics adopted by the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, EMTs pledge “to conserve life, alleviate suffering, promote health, do no harm, and encourage the quality and equal availability of emergency medical care”. Through the medical education for an EMT license, a student learns how to appropriately treat and care for a medical or traumatic emergency in order to be able to successfully follow this system. Students are also taught the concepts on how to follow the moral and ethical components of the pledge. However, actually being prepared to handle these kinds of dilemmas in real-life scenarios is a challenge EMT face no matter if they have been an EMS provider for months or years. These
This is when there isn’t enough EMS personnel or equipment like medical supplies or ambulance to deal with the number of patients or the severities of the casualties. To manage a MCI, an organizational system known as triage is performed to find out which patients get treatment first under the goal of doing the highest-level of good for the greatest amount of people. Therefore in this system spending 10 minutes resuscitating a critically injured patient is discouraged/avoided, so medical responders can treat multiple people in the same amount of time instead. This goes again the training of an EMT, whose instinct is to treat the patient with the worst injure first. This ethical judgement call of who to treat first is made difficult when friends and family of the severely injured beg for you to help their loved one, but you have to move to move on to the next person because their injuries are too severe like open head wound or cardiac arrest. This is especially a challenge in a rural town setting because the responding EMT might personally know the patient or patient's family, but must ethically follow the triage protocols. Therefore, if the patient is seriously injured or are on a lower priority because they are in a condition that is relatively stable, the EMT has to treat the higher priority patient
Consent in an emergency medical setting is when the patient either displays body language (implicit consent) agreeing to or verbally (explicit/expressed consent) complies to treatment. Implied consent is when treatment is enacted due to the patient being unconscious/ unresponsive or is a minor where the parent/guardian could be contacted. Consent allows the EMT to treat the patient without threats to liability. Therefore, if an EMT doesn’t ask for consent or listen to a refusal, they could be liable due to assault; a threat to bodily harm, battery; an intentional action that causes bodily harm, or false imprisonment; transporting or keeping a patient without their consent. Consent can be given and taken away at anytime during the interaction between the injured individual and the EMT. A patient can decide they don’t want certain interventions or don’t want to be transported to a medical facility. Nonetheless, this refusal has to be informed and the patient must be in a conscious and mentally competent state. Patients with an altered mental status due to trauma, metabolic disruption, intoxication via drugs or alcohol, or a pre-existing mental illness like dementia can’t refuse treatment and an implied consent occurs. Informed refusal also has to occur before an EMT can legally not treat the patient. The patient must make an informed decision based on the EMT