Military Medical Ethics – Scenario Collection
Recent Articles
Introduction: Neutrality of (military) medical personnel
Author: Dr phil Daniel Messelken | ZH Center for Military Medical Ethics. The professional ethical duty of HCP is first and foremost to their patients. They shall be “Physician First, Last,...
17 Nov, 2023 Views: 1062 Comments: 0
Treatment preference to an important military leader?
An international armed conflict led to many human casualties that require medical assistance and to be treated fast The ICRC has deployed a field hospital in a conflict-affected area. Due to...
11 Sep, 2023 Views: 639 Comments: 0
Mandatory COVID vaccination
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Army HQ mandated that all personnel be vaccinated for COVID-19. Although most personnel followed the order without many questions, a few did not want to...
11 Sep, 2023 Views: 816 Comments: 0
Treat pregnant in emergency situaton
You are the medical officer in charge of a military camp hospital on a UN-manted peace enforcement A pregnant woman in her 8th month of pregnancy arrives with a picture of vaginal bleeding, in...
11 Sep, 2023 Views: 803 Comments: 0
Disclosure in the public interest?
A sergeant in your unit asks if he can talk to you in confidence. Several weeks ago his patrol came under attack. Two of his colleagues were killed and three were severely wounded. Although he did...
02 Aug, 2023 Views: 1138 Comments: 0
Return to Duty: Ethical Issues for Military Health Professionals
"A U.S. soldier suffers injuries from the explosion of an improvised explosive device. Injuries include closed-head injury resulting in loss of consciousness. After six weeks of treatment, the...
02 Aug, 2023 Views: 2826 Comments: 0
Early signs of hearing loss
During a routine medical check, an infantry soldier shows early signs of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Although he can still hear sufficiently in order to perform his duties, the hearing loss...
02 Aug, 2023 Views: 110 Comments: 0
Dream assignment
A 40 year old male senior enlisted has received his dream tasking. He will be stationed at an embassy in Africa. He receives orders and is ready to out-process his base. However, his healthcare...
30 Jul, 2023 Views: 420 Comments: 0
Introduction: Limited Resources
Limited and/or scarce resources are among the main triggers for ethical dilemmas both during armed conflict and during other emergencies. PLACEHOLDER-DOCUMENT ONLY Each main category should...
15 Sep, 2022 Views: 486 Comments: 0
Access to military HCP – Medical Rules of Eligibility
MM commands a military field hospital, physically based on a semi-trailer truck convoy that follows combat troops into disputed territory as part of a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping and security...
15 Sep, 2022 Views: 203 Comments: 0
Snake bite – do you use antivenom for a local patient?
A report comes in announcing there is a patient at the main gate. Military nurse Yvonne goes there, together with a military physician and a number of colleagues. At the gate is a father holding a...
15 Sep, 2022 Views: 342 Comments: 0
10-month-old baby with suspected myocarditis after the earthquake in Haiti
A 10-month-old previously healthy baby boy was referred to our hospital with high fever and a convulsion. A second seizure occurred in the emergency-room (with generalized tonic-colonic convulsions,...
24 Jun, 2022 Views: 399 Comments: 0
A young woman with infected burns in the early post disaster phase in Haiti
Five days after an earthquake (on the second day of the international relief mission), a young woman in acute distress is brought to the field hospital's triage department accompanied by a volunteer...
09 May, 2022 Views: 469 Comments: 0
Surgery in a damaged hospital that risks to collapse?
After a major earthquake, many buildings, including a civilian hospital, are damaged and risk to collapse. A military medical team is deployed in the yard of the damaged hospital and uses to...
09 May, 2022 Views: 438 Comments: 0
Disclaimer about the scenarios
The scenarios published in the MME scenario database are based on different kinds of sources. These include media reports, literature, and reports about ethical challenges experienced in the field....
09 Nov, 2021 Views: 493 Comments: 0
How to contribute your own cases and scenarios
This scenario collection shall grow over time and new scenarios and cases shall be added. To do so, we need your support and input! Please help us collecting examples by contributing your own...
09 Nov, 2021 Views: 1725 Comments: 0
Treatment first, interrogation second
I experienced this in Afghanistan, while caring for detainees at the Role 3 hospital. Sometimes the guards of the military police (assigned to guard the detainee while in our care) and/ or the...
08 Nov, 2021 Views: 338 Comments: 0
Priority for treatment – Insurgent or soldier
One day some enemy attacked patients were transferred in. Among them, two had serious wounds with urgent needs of amputation and blood transfusion. One patient is a combatant and the second is an...
09 Sep, 2021 Views: 321 Comments: 0
Treat the enemy who just shot at you
A small convoy of three Humvees left the relative safety of the military-controlled Green Zone and within minutes was fired on by a single gunman lodged high above on an overpass. The first...
19 Aug, 2021 Views: 339 Comments: 0
Different treatment depending on nationality
Report from a Canadian military doctor: "When we received news that a mass casualty was en route with severe burns, we were told not to intubate Afghans with burns over more than 50 percent of...
19 Aug, 2021 Views: 201 Comments: 0
Keep alive despite massive wounds and unsure quality of life?
The ability to maintain the wounded alive is nothing less than astounding. Medical advances, combined with improved body armour and rapid evacuation, have resulted in lives saved that would have...
19 Aug, 2021 Views: 229 Comments: 0
Project Partner and Staff
Project staff Dr. Daniel Messelken. Center for Military Medical Ethics. Administrator and Chief editor of the Database. messelken@ethik.uzh.ch Project collaborators Prof. Dr. Heather Draper,...
29 Oct, 2020 Views: 435
Amputation to safe the life
When the 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck Wenchuan county, Sichuan province, in the West of China on May 12, 2008, Li Yue, an 11-year-old girl who dreamed of becoming a ballerina, was buried together...
25 Aug, 2020 Views: 330 Comments: 0
To fly or not to fly – MEDEVAC
"The only physician in a 17.000 inhabitants town asks for a MEDEVAC. The local doctor describes a stable case of a 40y man with chronic hypertension, who presented with a 12-hour long chest pain...
19 Aug, 2020 Views: 331 Comments: 0
Relations between Western Military Forces and NGOs
Setting: A rural region of a country where Western military forces are engaged in active combat. Scenario: "An international medical NGO is supporting several rural health clinics in a country...
04 Aug, 2020 Views: 380 Comments: 0


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