Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Sheri Fink, 2013
Crown Publishing
576 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307718969
Summary
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 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.
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 in America 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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1968-69 (?)
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan; Ph.D, M.D., Stanford University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize-Journalism; National Magazine Award
• Currently— a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center,
Washington, D.C.
Sheri Fink is an American physician, journalist, and a reporter on subjects covering health, medicine and science. A 1990 graduate of the University of Michigan, she received Ph.D. and M.D. from Stanford University in 1998 and 1999.
Career
Dr Fink is a a senior fellow with Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and a staff reporter at ProPublica in New York. Her articles have appeared in a number of high profiled publications such as the New York Times, Discover and Scientific American.
She has contributed to the public radio news magazine Public Radio International (PRI)’s The World covering a number of topics including the global HIV/AIDS pandemic and international aid in development, conflict and disaster settings.
Her first book, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (2003), is about medical professionals under siege during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, published in 2013, is an account of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. The book is based on her Pulitizer Prize winning 2009 article published at ProPublica.org and in the New York Times Magazine.
Awards
In 2010, she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for her article about the deadly choices faced at New Orleans' Memorial Hospital during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She also won a 2010 National Magazine Award for Reporting for the article and was a finalist for the 2010 Michael Kelly Award. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/19/2013 .)
Book Reviews
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. This approach is a literary gamble, demanding more of readers than a standard-issue medical thriller would. But Dr. Fink...more than delivers. She writes with a seasoned sense of how doctors and nurses improvise in emergencies, and about the ethical realms in which they work.... Sheri Fink has written an unforgettable story. Five Days at Memorial is social reporting of the first rank.
Jason Barry - New York Times
Though not present during the disastrous days, [Fink] interviewed more than 500 participants, from hospital executives to family members, prosecutors and ethicists, recording their comments and descriptions so meticulously that her gripping narrative captures not only the facts of the situation, but the thoughts of her witnesses and the feverishly unfolding disorder, confusion and tragedy. Her choice of sentence structure, the almost staccato voice, and the starkness of style and language reflect the circumstances so well that the reader cannot help being pulled into the discordant rhythms of those chaotic hours…The tone is...visceral and very appropriate to the atmosphere created by the storm and its consequences. What we have here is masterly reporting and the glow of fine writing.
Sherwin B. Nuland - New York Times Book Review
Fink has done a masterful reporting job, and Five Days at Memorial is often engrossing, particularly those pages that take readers inside the hospital...Fink’s book is essential reading for anyone who cares about New Orleans, the breakdown of order in disaster zones, and medical dilemmas under crisis circumstances.
Boston Globe
A triumph of journalism...Fink re-creates this world with mastery and sensitivity, revealing the full humanity of each character. Unlike post-storm commentary that jumped to black and white conclusions, painting the doctors as heroes or villains, Fink’s narrative wades through the muck and finds only real people making tough choices under circumstances the rest of us, if we’re lucky, will never experience
Houston Chronicle
Every page gives evidence of meticulous research, thousands of hours spent interviewing, prowling the halls at Memorial, reviewing legal documents and transcripts...[Fink] offers no easy answers, no rush to judgment. But she does deliver an amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.
Dallas Morning News
Fink’s descriptions of the flooded hospital, her extensive interviews with those who were there, profiles of investigators and study of the history and ethics of triage and euthanasia come very close to a full airing of how a disaster can upset society’s usual ethical codes, and how that played out at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center....Fink has written a compelling and revealing account.
Seattle Times
In this astonishing blend of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalism (Fink, who also has an M.D. and Ph.D., won the award for the investigative reporting on which this book is based) and breathtaking narration, she chronicles the chaotic evacuation of the hospital and the agonizing ethical, physical, and emotional quandaries facing Memorial nurses and doctors, including a nightmarish triage process that led to the controversial decision to inject critically ill patients with fatal doses of morphine..
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Fink’s six years of research and more than 500 interviews yield a rich narrative full of complex characters, wrenching ethical dilemmas, and mounting suspense. General readers and medical professionals alike will finish the book haunted by the question, "What would I have done?"
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [Fink] offers a stunning re-creation of the storm, its aftermath, and the investigation that followed.... She evenhandedly compels readers to consider larger questions, not just of ethics but race, resources, history, and what constitutes the greater good.... And, crucially, she provides context, relating how other hospitals fared in similar situations. Both a breathtaking read and an essential book for understanding how people behave in times of crisis.z
Booklist
Pulitzer Prize–winning medical journalist/investigator Fink War Hospital, 2003 submits a sophisticated, detailed recounting of what happened at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Fink draws those few days in the hospital’s life with a fine, lively pen, providing stunningly framed vignettes of activities in the hospital and sharp pocket profiles of many of the characters.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to get a discussion started for Five Days at Memorial:
1. To understand the pressures doctors and nurses faced, readers needed to know exactly what it felt like to be trapped in a sweltering hospital in a city that had descended into chaos. Do you think Sheri Fink does a good job of recreating those conditions?
2. What do you think of the behavior and decisions made by the medical staff at Memorial? Where you shocked by the lethal injections of morphine? According to Dr. Ewing Cook, "It was actually to the point where you were considering that you couldn’t just leave them; the humane thing would be to put ’em out.’’ What do you think?
3. What shocked, or disturbed, you the most? The actions of the staff? The unpreparedness (short-sightedness?) of the hospital? The horrific conditions everyone operated under?
4. How would you have fared under the conditions at New Orleans' Memorial?
5. What legal and ethical standards must doctors be expected to uphold in a disaster? Should they—or any professional—be held to the same standards that operate during normal conditions? In other words, is there a gray area in ethics when things go disastrously wrong?
6. In such situations as occured at Memorial, who should be saved first? Who should make those decisions?
7. Why did the local grand jury decline to bring charges against Anna Pou? Do you agree with its decision? To what degree should Pou be held accountable for her actions?
8. Ultimately, who is most responsible for the tragedy at Memorial Hospital? The hospital owners? The staff? The local, state, or federal government?
9. What lessons were learned from the hospital disaster at Memorial?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)