Synopsis: A
recounting of the five days following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New
Orleans and its dire effects on Memorial Hospital.
Date finished: 7
July 2014
Rating: *****
Comments:
There are some books that make me wish I was in a book club.
Five Days at Memorial is such a book.
When it came out, I had no interest in reading it. I don’t participate in
traditional healthcare, and I tend to stay away from it as a book topic. But
this book had garnered so much press, it wore down my defenses. Now I wish I’d
have read it when it was the hot new book, so I could be a part of the
discussion.
The book is divided into two parts. In part one, we meet the
characters, the doctors and patients central to the story. We follow the
hospital staff through the five harrowing days following Hurricane Katrina.
Days without electricity, without air conditioning, without running water, and
with the stench of flood waters, broken plumbing, and death. And we witness the
haphazard rescues, at times staff sending rescuers away without a single
patient aboard, at other times staff wondering where the rescues were. We learn
of the decision to send out the least critical patients first, instead of the
most critical. And we learn that someone made the decision to euthanize the last
19 (?) patients in order to exit the hospital on day five. The bodies were not
discovered until weeks (?) after they were drugged and abandoned. In short,
chaos, life, death, and fatal decisions.
Part two of the book involves the investigation into the
staff, specifically Dr. Anna Pou, who were involved in the euthanizing of the
last Memorial patients. We learn of the lawsuits bought and the outcomes of the
cases.
Fink flips between impartial reporter in part one and (I’d
say) decidedly anti-staff in part two. It seems obvious that she wanted the
doctors and nurses involved to pay a price for the decisions they made and be
accountable to the families they devastated.
The book had me shaking my head a lot. How could a hospital
in New Orleans, Louisiana, a hospital that had suffered a catastrophic flood
decades before, not have a clear and detailed set of emergency procedures in
place? How could they not have decided years in advance who would be saved
first and how they would deal with their most critical patients? How could
rescues not be planned out in detail with backup plans if an entire city was
underwater or otherwise crippled? How could any rescue flight be turned away
empty?
But the most troubling question, the question that’s hardest
to answer, is did the doctors and nurses do the right thing in the last hours
before abandoning the hospital? This question, of course, is at the heart of
the matter, bringing into the discussion so many different threads: morality
and ethics, the good of humanity, the role of healthcare, faith.
I am so glad I read this book, and I’m still at the mercy of
the questions it raises. I highly recommend you read this book.
Would you recommend
this to a friend?
Wholeheartedly.
WOW Carrie. I've never heard of this book -- but it sounds absolutely riveting. Were the legal implications/trials/whatever discussed to any extent (that's the lawyer in me :) ) Sounds like it was a powerful read. I'm hopping over to my library website to see if they have it in time for Bout of Books. :)
ReplyDeleteOh, do check this one out. The legal aspect might appeal to you, but there isn't a LOT of that. There's no trial. But one of the parts I actually enjoyed the most (and didn't write about in my review) was the DA's investigation. I found that fascinating. It's a smart, thoughtful book, one that I think a deep thinker like you will get a lot out of.
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