Five days at Memorial
Subtitle: life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital
By: Sheri Fink
Edition: Large print edition.
Series: Thorndike Press large print nonfiction; Thorndike Press large print nonfiction series
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 921
ISBN-13: 9781410466228
Subjects: Memorial Medical Center (New Orleans, La.); Administration; Health facilities; Forensic pathology; Hurricane Katrina, 2005; Disaster hospitals; Case studies; Large type books; Disaster medicine
Description: 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 to 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 health professionals 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. Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters -- and how we can do better.
Notes: National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, 2013
Table of contents: title: Deadly choices; title: Reckoning.