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.