Mobile Aid
THROUGHOUT CENTURIES OF WARFARE, soldiers could lie wounded on the field until the battle ended before receiving necessary care. That was bad enough in the era of swords and arrows, but the...
View ArticleSick of Waiting
IT’S A GRAY MONDAY IN MARCH, just past noon, and Alasdair Conn, the emergency room chief at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, is facing the daily crunch. He has almost two dozen patients...
View ArticleJust Doing Their Jobs
Video footage from the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013, captured wrenching images of first responders rushing to the aid of victims scattered across Boylston...
View ArticleWhen Disaster Strikes
When you work in disaster medicine, no two disasters are alike, which means that every day is an exercise in improvisation. Consider what Miriam Aschkenasy, a physician and deputy director of global...
View ArticleHow a Disaster Mends
WHEN THE 7.8 EARTHQUAKE HIT NEPAL LAST APRIL, it killed nearly 9,000 people and left hundreds of thousands injured, homeless or lacking basic services. The global medical community quickly arrived in...
View ArticleSirens Off
TWICE A WEEK John Farris pulls up to a two-story home in Fort Worth, Texas. Farris is a paramedic but he drives a Ford Fusion, not an ambulance, and instead of coming to take 42-year-old Christopher...
View ArticleSecond Opinion, Summer 2016
Our Call to Compassion I read with interest and distress the personal essay in the last issue of Proto (“Please, Keep Your Prayers,” Winter 2016). The writer recounts her mother’s health care...
View ArticleAftermath
IN THE DAYS AFTER the World Trade Center attack in 2001, confusion reigned on the ground. New York City’s agencies scrambled to coordinate a response to an attack the city could not possibly have...
View ArticleAfter the Storm
Colleen Snydeman, director of quality and safety for Patient Care Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, felt the full force of Hurricane Maria three weeks after September 20, 2017, the day the...
View ArticleThe Ambulance Arrives
MANHATTAN DWELLERS ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE SOUND OF SIRENS echoing down the steel canyons in the middle of the night. What most don’t realize is that their forebears were some of the first in the country...
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