SCENARIO RESPONSE

  Compare MY response to that of your classmate. Assess how my classmate’s response would relate to public health issues more broadly. Determine whether my classmate’s justification for allocating resources is appropriate when considering public health issues more broadly. Pose at least one follow-up question to your classmate’s discussion response. Please make sure your questions are open-ended and not one-word response questions in order to enhance critical thinking skills.

QUESTION: Imagine that you are standing on the bank of a river and injured people start floating down the river towards you. There is no end to the floating people…they just keep coming and coming. You are alone, and you do not have cell service to phone for back up. What do you do? In your discussion post, discuss what type of assistance you would want to provide by completing the following:

· Explain where you think it would be best to focus your energy assisting (e.g., should you stay where you are and pull people out of the river, or should you go upstream to find out why injured people are ending up in the river?).

· Determine what proportion of assistance should go to aiding injured people versus preventing the cause of the injuries in the first place.

· Justify your reasoning for why you would allocate your resources that way

MY RESPONSE: In this scenario, there is no end to the floating people but then the injured people are floating downwards towards where I am standing. As for this case, having to know what is exactly needed is somehow tricky. Offering to assist is better than assuming that nothing is happening. It is important to also note that prevention is better than cure at such a stage(Art, 2016). Since I cannot call for help, the assistance I can make despite the confusion is to help the injured people out of the river as much as I can.

Getting the solution is better here, pulling them out can be a good idea but again helping them get out of the river could be a difficult task causing more harm than expected. I would consider going upstream and find out the cause as to why people are being carried away into the river. I will concentrate more on solving the cause problem meaning it can be 80% then assisting the injured people out of the river can be 20%. I would allocate my resources this way since fixing the problem would result in fewer or no other incidences of people being carried into the river whereas pulling people from the river could be doing a difficult time which could end up resulting in more people being driven into the river.

CLASSMATE 1 RESPONSE SANTOS:

My first instinct is to start pulling out as many injured people as possible. However, after a moment of clarity, I would opt to find out the cause of the incident and run upstream. If the distance is not far away I will proceed with my plan and continue running upstream. If the source of the injured personnel is indeed too far away, I will choose to be practical and ration my limited energy and rescue as many people as I can instead. Furthermore, there is a high probability that the cause of the injury for the people is too large or complicated for me to solve.

Providing assistance and doing what I can to help as many victims as possible is more feasible for this situation since I am by myself. Furthermore, the possibility of also getting injured if I continue to proceed upstream is also an issue. Simply put, the safest place for me at the moment is away from the source of the injured people. Apart from the rescue mission, I also have to perform triage on the individuals that I rescued.  Triage is the process of sorting patients based on the urgency of their medical needs or condition (Ebrahimi et al., 2016). I believe that allocating my very limited energy and mental fortitude can result in the most positive impact possible for the victims.  

CLASSMATE 2 RESPONSE THOMPSON:

Good evening class! 
     If I were in this situation and I was the only one available to provide assistance I would focus on prevention. My first reason is, as the only person to pull the injured people out of the water I would quickly become overtaxed and tire easily which could ultimately lead to my own injury. By searching for the source and eliminating the cause of injury it will stop adding the amount of people who already require assistance. The only possible way to end this scenario, since I cannot request help, is to stop further injury to more people. Prevention is the main solution in this situation, because if people keep getting injured it will just be a never ending cycle of injured patients that I am fishing out of the river. Then, once I get them out of the river who is to say I can offer further assistance. Proving once again, that the best solution is to go up river and stop whatever is inuring these people. 

     Maybe, if some people are only slightly injured you could ask them to help others out of the water, but your main focus should be on preventing the injuries themselves. The majority of your efforts should be solicited toward prevention and not treatment at this time. Aside from this scenario, you can use immunizations as a perfect example. Much of the world has eradicated or almost eradicated many diseases due to vaccinations. This is another strong example of why prevention is key.

DUE 11/17/19 @9AM EASTERN W/ PLAG REPORT ATTACHED