Lots of words and work: what does it mean to me?

Spent some time reviewing the weeks current stories on avian flu. No dramatic anouncements or excitement. That is a good thing when you are talking about a pandemic. I hope you have the time to read the articles I selected to post. I feel that everyone should know what the state they live in is doing to prepare for the possibility.

When the health departments talk about needing to get guidelines from the federal government to assist with how to ration the equipment that we have, so that it will not be used first come first served, I get chills. Nowadays, hospitals are quite constrained with budgetary issues. For most of us consumers and for medical professionals it means that hospital care is not like the "good old days". Many days at work in the ICU we are using 75% of our ventilators. With the surge expected from a pandemic flu, many patients would not be able to be on ventilators, solely because there are not enough to go around. Ventilators are not something the hospital would just call and order either. They are sophisticated and expensive machines. They can be rented by the hospital, but there are a limited number of rentals available too.


States are wrestling with the issues of limited resources in their pandemic plans called for by the President. Who should get the ventilator? The metastatic breast cancer patient or the 25 year old with avian flu? The twelve year old boy with avian flu, the 90 year old lady with pneumonia or the car accident victim with massive head trauma? Who should get the vaccine if one is developed and produced in time? Health care workers? Their families? Police and fireman? What about the people who keep the power plants running and the cell phones working and the water running at our houses? Should the sickest people (those with underlying diseases that affect their immunity) get it first? The oldest, the youngest: how do you choose. The choices are actually being made for us, but it is worth thinking about and talking about with your family and co-workers.

Are you going to stay home and not go to work if a pandemic really occurs? Is your job essential to society? I know I have thought about this. Why would I want to go to work in an ICU with the sickest patients in the hospital potentially all of them with avian flu? Obviously you don't go to work in that situation for the money. But why do it? More to come.