21–27 of 27 posts
I remember a few of those being read out when I was young. I thought it was funny at the time, but it must have been terrifying to have someone personally address you over national radio.
As I stop at an intersection, some guy I’ve never seen before walks up to the car and excitedly tells me «Mr. $MY_NAME, you must phone home immediately!»
Puzzled (and worried!) I asked him how he knew my name - turned out the local radio station had announced that if anyone saw the tall, white guy - tell him to phone home!
No less worried, I thanked him and drove off to find a phone.
Turned out my grandmother (bless her!) had decided to give me a call just to chat; she’d rung up my employer asking how to get hold of me; he’d called the local contractor, they had realized I was out and about and after a few more delegations, all involved assumed it was urgent and pushed the big, red button.
When I finally got someone at home on the line, half panicked, it felt absurd when my father just said «Oh, your grandmother wondered how you were doing down there; I’ll fetch her...»
My grandmother? To her dying day, she couldn’t make up her mind whether this was the most embarrassing or most hilarious experience of her life - the day she made all of Owando look out for her grandson...
Probably both.
Years ago, I found myself in an exceedingly remote backwater of Central Africa for work; it was fairly safe to state that I was the only person within a hundred mile radius who wasn’t born there. As I stop at an intersection, some guy I’ve never seen before walks up to the car and excitedly tells me «Mr. $MY_NAME, you must phone home immediately!» Puzzled (and worried!) I asked him how he knew my name - turned out th…
Asking someone to find the "tall, white guy" would not have been out of place!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have emergency contacts on my phone. You can access them, together with my medical information, without having to unlock my phone. A simple system that works.
Please elaborate more. Phone OS, method, phone lock type? Thanks, I also want to set it up on my phone, Android. The easiest I found is to write in info on an image & set it up as my lock screen wallpaper.
That's awesome! We kindof have a more targeted system (for example, Amber Alerts), but it seems like something very similar. This makes me wonder if the mobile carriers and phone OS manufacturers could collaborate on a similar type of targeted system. Let's assume that an accredited healthcare provider has an emergent patient. The patient has been identified, and a name of a friend/relative/etc. has been provided, bu…
I have emergency contacts on my phone. You can access them, together with my medical information, without having to unlock my phone. A simple system that works.
(An unfortunate acronym in these times, but it's a term some subset of the population recognizes.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is smart. I'm an inpatient physician. We run into issues all the time where we can't reach family for an elderly or non-responsive patient.
What ethical concerns do you face doing this for someone who has not consented? What if the patient didn't want their family to be reached? What if the patient has been trying to escape an abusive family and you're leading them straight back to the patient! I always wonder when my local police force Tweets 'missing person' and I think 'what the fuck if they were trying to escape an abusive partner!!'. Or what if they…
How would you handle it? Say you are in a park and you see somebody drop from an apparent heart attack. Do you start CPR or do you stand there wondering if maybe they have a do-not-resuscitate order on file somewhere?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is smart. I'm an inpatient physician. We run into issues all the time where we can't reach family for an elderly or non-responsive patient.
What ethical concerns do you face doing this for someone who has not consented? What if the patient didn't want their family to be reached? What if the patient has been trying to escape an abusive family and you're leading them straight back to the patient! I always wonder when my local police force Tweets 'missing person' and I think 'what the fuck if they were trying to escape an abusive partner!!'. Or what if they…
Abruptly disappearing is a behavioral pattern more common among the mentally ill than abuse victims, in which case alerting family is probably the most ethical thing one could possibly do. (If anything, the family themselves might not want to be contacted-- "oh, god, him again?")
> I'm not sure police or hospitals should be going around asking after anyone who's an adult who hasn't consented.
Everyone is someone's child, or parent. For the sake of a minority of lone wolves who just want to be left alone, why expect the rest of society to die alone in their hospital beds? Not everybody can even give consent, or are mentally sound enough to to do.
The most human thing we can do is to try to connect patients with their families, even if it goes wrong a small fraction of the time.