Is medicine doing all it can to ensure health and safety?

Physicians and hospitals should concern themselves with the broader issues of public health and safety. Physicians should be personally prepared to respond in crisis situations by using CPR and other emergency medical skills. Also, hospitals could help clean up inner-city neighborhoods and sponsor programs to help children or other at-risk populations. Such efforts could help reduce the incidence of traumatic injuries and other medical problems.
The disaster in Oklahoma City raises many questions, some obvious, some only related after you think about it. Those of us in medicine might wonder, for instance, how prepared our [...]