What a superb work of investigative journalism!
"Five Days at Memorial," by Sheri Fink, takes an excruciatingly honest look inside New Orleans' Memorial Hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Beset by flooding, power failures, extreme heat, and a plethora of miscommunications with rescue personnel from a variety of organizations, doctors had to make unheard of decisions regarding patient care. Unfortunately, some of those decisions were truly horrific.
More than just a recounting of facts, Fink delves deeper into the issues of medical ethics during catastrophic failures of infrastructure. With limited resources, how exactly are doctors to determine which of their patients should be rescued first? Should it be the able-bodied with the best outlook for survival? Or the most fragile, even if transporting them in such condition could put them at greater risk? Without clear policies and procedures, some of the medical staff at Memorial made decisions that would later put them before a grand jury to face charges of manslaughter.
You will not be able to read this book without making a judgment call as to what you believe to be the way to best honor the lives most vulnerable in a natural disaster. As for me, I found myself horrified at the audacity of Dr Anna Pou, who led the lethal injections of patients she deemed too difficult to evacuate--even as helicopters arrived outside.
Sheri Fink has done an outstanding job with this book, and I believe she has honored everyone who was a patient of Memorial Hospital for those five days with a transparent and thorough account of the chaos.
I received a copy of this book free of charge from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers in exchange for a fair review.
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