Role of EMTs in Ohio executions criticized

Do you think EMT-I or P should be involved in executions?

  • Yes, EMT-Is are okay to give lethal medications.

    Votes: 7 15.9%

  • Yes, but it should be at least an EMT-P giving the medications.

    Votes: 9 20.5%

  • No, EMT(P)s should not be involved.

    Votes: 18 40.9%

  • Oppose the death penalty regardless of who gives the medications.

    Votes: 10 22.7%
  • Total voters
    44
  • Poll closed .
First, do no harm.

Rip their cards, throw them in jail.
 
JPINFV said:
So you'd rather not have medical professionals involved in executions even if it means that the codemned feels more pain than would otherwise be present?
Click to expand...

Yes.

No one with any medical training above first aid/cpr should even be in the building. It is an ethical duty to oppose preforming the death penalty with medical professionals. And to anyone who thinks paramedics are not bound by this, open up the ethics chapter in your textbook.

Why are you in medical school? How dare you suggest that medical professionals be involved in murder?
 
Sasha said:
You stated the problem yourself.



Prisons are not focusing on rehabillitating their inmates, just containing them for the years and then releasing. The rehabilitation programs in jails need some serious work!



Some rape victims will tell you, while it was a horrible thing and caused them a lot of pain, it made them a better person in the long run, some even go on to understand that the person who hurt them was very sick and find some way to forgive them. I'm not excusing it in the least, it's a terrible thing to do to someone, but you assume that being raped is the end of someone's livelyhood is insulting to the victim, they may never be the same, but someone may never be the same after a car accident either, should we execute the car driver? Rape is a terrible, terrible and horrible act, but is an act that is comitted by someone who is mentally ill. Do we fault someone for being sick?

Serial rapists and child molesters should be held in jail the rest of their natural life, but I don't think they should be executed. Let the punishment fit the crime.



It's a solid case that they had intercourse, it is not a solid case that it was forced intercourse and not consensual with someone backing out and crying rape later.
Click to expand...

You're reading way too far into my post, rather than taking it at face value. I never said anything about being a victim meaning the end of someone's livelyhood. And to compare a car accident victim is crazy. I'm not going to beat a dead horse, but reality is that very few sex offenders are held in custody for life, and many reoffend when they are released. Call it being sick if you need to, but they victimize people over and over.

And for putting sex offenders in general population, for the most part, the being killed is mostly derived from TV. Rarely are they murdered. If we we're to put them in gen-pop the bleeding heart liberals would cry that we are violating their rights, afterall, they're just sick, not criminals.
 
daedalus said:
Yes.

No one with any medical training above first aid/cpr should even be in the building. It is an ethical duty to oppose preforming the death penalty with medical professionals. And to anyone who thinks paramedics are not bound by this, open up the ethics chapter in your textbook.
Click to expand...

Are you seriously suggesting that the end all and be all of medical ethics is what a paramedic text book author thinks and that ethics is not up to debate or discussion? There's a big difference between the cardiology and ethics sections of a text book.

Are you also suggesting that anyone involved in healthcare should be against the death penalty on the sole reason of being involved in health care?
Why are you in medical school? How dare you suggest that medical professionals be involved in murder?
Click to expand...
Execution is not murder. Murder and homicide are related, but not the same thing. Execution is a duly administered penalty for a crime with the penalty being decided as a possibility by the state, as a representative of the citizens, prior to the crime being committed. People who are executed have been found guilty by a jury of their peers in a court of law. The constitution of the USA grants its citizens protections from "cruel and unusual punishment," which in terms of the death penalty has been interpreted as making death as painless and clean as possible (e.g. the guillotine is rapid, yet messy).

As such, any health care provider who is also pro-death penalty arguably has a duty to insure that the punishments given out by the state, which is a representative of all citizens including the provider, meets the requirements of the constitution. Simply put, execution is not murder and is not comparable to physician assisted suicide (albeit I am willing to take on this ethical discussion as well) or so called "angel of death" murders.
 
daedalus said:
First, do no harm.

Rip their cards, throw them in jail.
Click to expand...

I don't know about you, but I never took, recited, or signed the Hippocratic Oath, therefore, it has no consequences on me.




fortsmithman said:
Personally I'm opposed to capital punishment because of 2 cases here in Canada where the person accused of murder was wrongly convicted where after decades of being in prison the real murderer was caught.
Click to expand...

That's a problem of the court systems, NOT capital punishment.
 
I knew this was going to devolve into a discussion of ethics.

If you believe that capital punishment is ethically justifiable, then the easiest way to justify the involvement of medical professionals is to say that they are not bound by a provider-patient relationship with the condemned.

I'd argue, actually, that they're not acting as medical professionals at all, but simply applying a few of the technical skills of medicine in the capacity of executioner. Whether or not that's justified hinges on two questions: is it ethical to use medical skills for non-medical purposes, and is capital punishment just (in the specific or the general case)?

I'm not going to discuss the second question; it's out of the scope of this forum, and arguments about law, politics, and ethics get messy very quickly, especially here.
 
JPINFV said:
A strict interpretation of that would ban surgery and chemotherapy as both do harm to get to a greater good.
Click to expand...

I am sure you have heard of "First, hasten to help" which preserves doing no harm while allowing procedures like cannulation and surgery to take place.
 
JPINFV said:
Are you seriously suggesting that the end all and be all of medical ethics is what a paramedic text book author thinks and that ethics is not up to debate or discussion? There's a big difference between the cardiology and ethics sections of a text book.

Are you also suggesting that anyone involved in healthcare should be against the death penalty on the sole reason of being involved in health care?

Execution is not murder. Murder and homicide are related, but not the same thing. Execution is a duly administered penalty for a crime with the penalty being decided as a possibility by the state, as a representative of the citizens, prior to the crime being committed. People who are executed have been found guilty by a jury of their peers in a court of law. The constitution of the USA grants its citizens protections from "cruel and unusual punishment," which in terms of the death penalty has been interpreted as making death as painless and clean as possible (e.g. the guillotine is rapid, yet messy).

As such, any health care provider who is also pro-death penalty arguably has a duty to insure that the punishments given out by the state, which is a representative of all citizens including the provider, meets the requirements of the constitution. Simply put, execution is not murder and is not comparable to physician assisted suicide (albeit I am willing to take on this ethical discussion as well) or so called "angel of death" murders.
Click to expand...
A physician does not have a duty to the constitution, in fact, he must place his patient above all other concerns. He has only a duty to his patient.

The principle of nonmalfeasance is not debatable part of a text book. It is a responsibility of the paramedic.

Allowing something to continue because it is the "law" is akin to slavery.
 
All citizens have a duty to the constitution.

So you'd rather just have someone with zero experience and little training (yes, IVs aren't hard, but we're talking about people who would do it a few times a year at best) pushing random drugs into a patient than having an educated provider doing as little harm as possible in order to carry out the wishes of the people?

Allowing something to happen because of the law is slavery? Would you rather have anarchy then?
 
daedalus said:
A physician does not have a duty to the constitution, in fact, he must place his patient above all other concerns. He has only a duty to his patient.

The principle of nonmalfeasance is not debatable part of a text book. It is a responsibility of the paramedic.

Allowing something to continue because it is the "law" is akin to slavery.
Click to expand...

Wow, you sound like you're about to Godwin yourself.

The principle of nonmaleficence, which at least one poster has misapplied, only applies to patients (and foreseeable effects of treatment, presumably; you cannot ethically harm others to help your patient).

Anyone care to argue why a condemned prisoner that a paramedic is helping kill is a patient?
 
If he is not to be considered a patient, what is he considered, then?
And if not a patient, can the medic practice the skills allowed by state or local scope of practice?
 
If a person who sticks an IV into murderer's vein is required to be at least EMT-P, then I guess the guys who behead criminals should be certified surgeons.
 
That wouldn't make sense, because beheading isn't a medical procedure. Even if not being used to treat or diagnose, I doubt many wouldn't call it a medical procedure. And they are drawing on their medical education and practice to do it (tourniquet, finding vein, getting flash, assuring patency of line).
 
From Lippincott's Pharmacology "The goal of drug therapy is to prevent, cure, or control various diseases"

You push a drug on someone, they are your patient.
 
..curing social ills.
 
I'm going to leave the philosophical debates alone and try to look at it from a purely legal standpoint. If Ohio law has a provision that only -P's can administer the medications, I would think any defense lawyer worth his three piece suit would jump on that pretty hard at appeal time after imposition of a death sentence. Why that state would give a defense lawyer a plum like that escapes me. I know a little about emergency care and much less than that about the law, but that's just my .02.
 
Agreed. No need to complicate it.

Are the starting of IV's and pushing of controlled medications regulated procedures? If so, are they doing it within a legal scope of practice?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top