Natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and biological attacks are inevitable and our health care system is face with the daunting task of saving as many lives as possible during such an event. The expected delivery of care is to provide quality and safe care that will achieve the best health outcome for a patient. However, when a disaster hit and resources become scarce, it is difficult for health care providers to maintain a normal standard of care. As a result, health care professionals must resort to altered standards of care to reduce loss of life. In the article “When disaster hits, where does the standard of care go?” Cushman compares and analyzes the standard of care in “normal” emergencies to altered standards of care in natural disasters and briefly discusses the immunity principles (Cushman, 2011). …show more content…
That information is then compared and analyzed with the altered standards of care in disasters by discussing what is an “emergency” in a disaster, “altered” statutory obligations, and what is “altered” standard of care (Cushman, 2011). The author explains that in “normal” emergencies care is focus on each patient, but during a disaster care is focus on “optimizing population outcome” with the available resources (Cushman, 2011). Health care providers make critical decisions determining who receive immediate care and who will have to wait based on the severity of