Five Days at Memorial: Life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital

by Sheri, Fink

Paper Book, 2013

Library's review

I remember hearing news reports about the tragedies that unfolded across New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, including the situation at Memorial Medical Center. Now Sheri Fink has put together a comprehensive look at exactly what happened and how things went so wrong. The second part of the book,

which deals with the legal investigation and prosecution surrounding the case, was almost all new material to me. While naturally not as gripping as the recounting of the actual events during the storm, it was still very compelling. Highly recommended.

Show Less

Genres

Collection

Your library

Description

Sociology. True Crime. Nonfiction. HTML: The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ �?� Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink�??s landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina�??and her suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several of those caregivers faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing. In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are for the impact of large-scale disasters�??and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis. One of The New York Times' Best Ten Books of the Y… (more)

Media reviews

The Guardian (UK)

What developed over the five days, in a hospital ironically well supplied with bottled water and food, and resupplied by air with drugs, was a system of triage that varied depending on which company had responsibility for the patients. Against this background, it would later be alleged, key Tenet

personnel discussed, and then carried out, euthanasia on the terminally ill patients even as relief was imminent. Fink is in no doubt that some kind of crime took place even if she is fair and deeply sympathetic to the plight of the exhausted medical staff involved. "Moral clarity," she writes, describing the moment the patients were injected with a powerful cocktail of drugs, "was easier to maintain in concept than in execution." If the beginning of the book is sometimes awkwardly structured, Fink finds her stride a few chapters in and make this a tight, provocative and gripping read.

Show Less

— 2 more

Lit/Rant

Five Days at Memorial is thorough reporting about what happened at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Sheri Fink, who is both a journalist and a Ph.D. neuroscientist, won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for the 2009 New York Times/Pro

Publica article “Deadly Choices at Memorial,” which became the basis for this book. ... Fink’s journalism chops show, particularly in her attention to detail and her unwillingness to paint anyone as a villain. Some readers may feel that she’s not tough enough on Dr. Pou, but what Fink has really accomplished here is putting the reader on the spot, with one crisis after another and no real hope of rescue.

Show Less

The New York Times

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.

Show Less