Five Days at Memorial. Harrowing Questions, and Ethics, During Katrina

[sheshe2]

****Twelve years now****



Eight years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Floodwaters rose in the Uptown streets surrounding Memorial Medical Center, where hundreds of people slowly realized that they were stranded. The power grid failed, toilets overflowed, stench-filled corridors went dark. Diesel generators gave partial electricity. Hospital staff members smashed windows to circulate air.

Gunshots could be heard, echoing in the city. Two stabbing victims turned up at this hospital, which was on life support itself, and were treated.
By Day 4 of the hurricane, the generators had conked out. Fifty-two patients in an intensive care wing lay in sweltering darkness; only a few were able to walk. The doctors and nurses, beyond exhaustion, wondered how many could survive.

When evacuations were done, 45 patients had not made it out alive. The State of Louisiana began an investigation; forensic consultants determined that 23 corpses had elevated levels of morphine and other drugs, and decided that 20 were victims of homicide.

In her book “Five Days at Memorial,” Dr. Sheri Fink explores the excruciating struggle of medical professionals deciding to give fatal injections to those at the brink of death. Dr. Fink, a physician turned journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for her investigation of these events in a 2009 joint assignment for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine. This book is much more than an extension of that report. Although she had the material for a gripping disaster story, Dr. Fink has slowed the narrative pulse to investigate situational ethics: what happens when caregivers steeped in medicine’s supreme value, preserving life, face traumatic choices as the standards of civilization collapse.

snip

Memorial, part of a chain owned and operated by the Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corporation, had no generator mechanic on staff or an evacuation plan, despite the city’s history of hurricanes and flooding. “Tulane hospital in downtown New Orleans,” Dr. Fink writes, “was also dark, hot and surrounded by water, but officials at its parent corporation, HCA, had been proactive about arranging for private helicopters and buses to rescue patients, employees and their families, betting correctly that government assets would prove insufficient.”

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/books/five-days-at-memorial-by-sheri-fink.html

The decision of life and death and the politicians that failed us.

[Docreed2003]

1. K&R...

"Five Days at Memorial" is a harrowing book...would definitely recommend it for those interested in an on the ground look at what happened in Katrina at one hospital. I would also recommend highly the book "The Great Deluge" which gives an extremely in depth account of the minute to minute details of Katrina and the aftermath, not just in NOLA but the entire gulf coast!

[sheshe2]

2. I will check out "The Great Deluge"

I started reading 5 days awhile back...had to put it down. I was not in a good place at that time. Planning to grab my sisters copy tomorrow.

Thanks, Docreed...I hope Texas fairs better.

[Docreed2003]

3. Yeah don't read "Five Days" unless you're prepared for a heavy dose of reality...

What happened at that hospital is a damn travesty, but, as a healthcare provider...I have to catch myself and think "What if I were in their shoes?" If a patient is ventilator dependent and we've lost our generators and your forced to bag that patient manually for every...single..breath....with no clue when relief would be coming, and you also have the medical knowledge to know that these patients are going to die because manual bag ventilation cannont perform physiologic functions the way a mechanical ventilator can...what would you do? Do you allow the patients to suffer? Do you help ease their suffering knowing that your not likely going to save everyone because of lack of manpower and lack of resources?? It's gut wrenching to me as a provider, and especially because I lived through that storm with my family in Louisiana. I just can't imagine what that experience in that hospital must have been like, and it was an extremely hard read. They only caveat I would say, it's easy to blame these folks from an outsiders perspective, but if you dig through the facts...similar things occurred at Tulane and Charity Hospitals, just not on the same scale. I know for fact it did at Charity because one of my closest medical friends was there in the hospital after the levees broke.

"The Great Deluge" isn't much better from an emotional perspective! It surely will put to rest any of the folks who jokingly suggest they long for the days of "W". But it does present the details of what happened and explain in vivid detail the series of events that took place before, during, and after the storm. The author is very fair in the way blame is handed down, but that didn't make it any easier to read.

My thoughts are most certainly with Texas tonight. Hopefully, the aftermath will be managed well by the professionals on the ground, local/state/&federal...despite the dipshit we have as President!

[sheshe2]

4. I have a whole family of medical professionals.

From grandfather, grandmother, mother, sister and niece. Over the years I have heard it all. My heart goes out to the caregivers and the decisions made. My sister told me all about the ventilators and bagging them manually. You would need a whole team to do that.

My heart is for Texas right now as yours is, Docreed. I hope this ass does a better job, I have my doubts.

[LeftInTX]

5. I remember a nurse called CNN from one of the hospitals

She said, "Do you know that we are here?"
She then elaborated on the conditions. She thought that one reason the conditions were so bad was because nobody knew that their hospital was having so many problems. She thought that by calling in to CNN that help would arrive. She thought what was something going on was only at that specific hospital.

I felt sooooo bad for her.

[raven mad]

6. It won't get better as long as money, not people, is in charge.

sheshe2, we collected everything we could. We helped with every possible penny we could spare. And I still cry. EVERY time.

I hoping Texas doesn't have levee's fail - because, of course, Texas has oil, and Bush............... omg, what a horrendous time that was after Katrina.

A friend (yes, after the storm) told me her daughter "gave it up" to a guy 30 years older, to get her little brother some insulin.

Yeah, I still cry.

This is another NEVER AGAIN.