Real-Life Decision Making
You are a coroner investigating a death that occurred in the waiting room
of a local hospital. A 49-year-old woman arrived at the emergency room with
severe chest pain, shortness of breath and nausea. She waited for two hours
to receive treatment and died before she received any medical attention.
As a coroner, it is your job to determine the cause of death. Your options
include natural circumstances, accidents, homicide, suicide and unknown causes.
Heart attacks often kill people and they are a natural cause of death.
You have seen many deaths due to heart attacks before, and they fall into
the "natural causes" category. The symptoms that the woman identified are
those of a heart attack. However, this woman presented herself at a hospital
with critical symptoms and did not receive treatment for two hours. This is
not the standard of care that patients should expect.
The inaction of the hospital was reckless, and the woman died as a result.
This meets the definition of a non-criminal homicide. If you decide that
the death was a homicide, it will attract a lot of controversy. The hospital
and policy makers will suffer consequences.
If you decide that the death was natural, the seriousness of the situation
could be ignored and other patients may not be given timely treatment.
What do you do?