This month’s feature article at the National Geographic magazine is a report by Neil Shea and James Nachtwey from the frontlines of medicine practice, on the battlefields of Iraq.
From the article:
But then, war medicine is not civilian medicine. It’s dirtier, faster. The wounds are worse, the patients at greater risk. Here medical teams cut, crack, and inject where their civilian counterparts might pause and worry about lawsuits. Ibn Sina is designed for life-saving procedures, not the long recoveries required by amputees or burn victims. The mission is simple: stabilize patients, ship them on to facilities equipped for longer term care.
“There are no litigious restrictions over here,” a lieutenant colonel who is also a doctor tells me. “People play fearlessly, and when they play fearlessly, they make fewer mistakes. It’s a dose of reality you’ll never forget. The surgeons, nurses–never in the rest of their lives will they be who they are here.”
Link…