Posted by akc on August 30, 2001, at 9:07:00
In reply to Re: Duty to Rescue in Australia, posted by Rach on August 29, 2001, at 23:03:13
> In Australia, you do not have to help a stranger in any way.
>
> If you are NOT trained in first aid, however, you must offer assistance to someone you know, no matter how tenuous the connection (your sister's boyfriend's mother's uncle).
>
> If you are trained in first aid, and you do give assistance that is either against the person's wishes or harms them (ie if you resusitate someone who does not want to be bought back to life, or if during CPR you break the patient's rib) you can be held liable because you are trained. If you don't have first aid qualifications, then you are less liable. For this reason, if you have a first aid certificate, you are not required to offer assistance ever.
>
> Strange, isn't it!I think this is a great example of what happens when you try to legislate ethics and morality. What should be those lines? A bunch of lawmakers have got together here in Australia and tried to do it. I wonder how many people have been held accountable under the "duty to rescue" statute -- because it was your sister's boyfriend's mother's uncle. The same really goes for the standard of care type statutes where those trained are held to a higher standard than those not trained.
In some communities here in the states, professionals are actually given a freer pass than nonprofessionals. The idea behind this is that we want to encourage professionals to stop -- so they are held to a gross negligence standard, where others are held to just a negligence standard. But here in the states, do doctors and other health care workers even know that these statutes exist? And if they go from one city to the next, do they realize that the rules change?
It is strange indeed.
poster:akc
thread:1753
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20010718/msgs/1857.html