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    Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital
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    Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital
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    Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital
    Audiobook17 hours

    Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital

    Written by Sheri Fink

    Narrated by Kirsten Potter

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    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 Year

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 10, 2013
    ISBN9780804128100
    Unavailable
    Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital

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    Reviews for Five Days at Memorial

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    • 4/5
      3.5 stars. The was well written and portrayed a very distressing view of what happens at Memorial during Katrina. Regardless of your feelings of what occurred, the author dos a good job of presenting a mostly unbiased narrative (in my opinion). While I was not there and will not judge, the choice made with regards to Everett does not sit well. Deserving of the Pulitzer.
    • 4/5
      Five Days At Memorial is a reconstruction of the time following Hurricane Katrina that survivors spent at the hospital, largely without electricity and with decreasing supplies of food and water. Horrific mismanagement led to a situation so desperate and chaotic that later some doctors and nurses were accused of having euthanized some of their patients. The second half of the book deals with the investigation and trials following that accusation.

      The first thing the author did right was pick a captivating, if horrifying, story to tell. This book was intense! Everyone was constantly making tough decisions. Sometimes I wanted to scream I was so frustrated by administrators who were obviously (in hindsight) making very poor decisions. At other times I was deeply moved by people’s compassion. Even the second half, detailing the investigation and trials, was emotionally engaging because of the number of people whose lives were going to be affected by the outcome.

      I think the main reason this story had such an impact was because the author did such a great job making people come to life for me. The primary focus of the story was on only a few of the many individuals trapped at Memorial. This made it easier to keep track of who was who and what was going on. However, even characters who were mentioned tangentially were often fleshed out with some small details about their personal life. I was very impressed by the author’s ability to share just enough to make me remember that these “secondary characters” were real people without distracting from her main narrative. Given the emotional impact of the story, the ending felt like a bit of a let down, but I think that’s simply one danger of telling a true story. Not everything always works out in a satisfying, this is the end of the narrative kind of way in real life.

      This review first published on Doing Dewey.
    • 4/5
      Five Days at Memeorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. Sheri Fink. 2013. The author gives a shockingly vivid picture of what happened before, during and after Katrina ravaged Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. No one was prepared for the disaster. Delays, miscommunication, lack of a cohesive plan or leadership led to a sorry saga of needless death and suffering. Fink is an excellent writer and methodically reconstructs what happened and how so many patients died at Memorial. It is difficult to believe that something this horrible could happen in the United States at this time in history and terrifying to realize how close we all are to another disaster like this. Fink is meticulous in her reconstruction and in detailing what happened to the patients and the hospital workers after they were rescued. This was a difficult book to read and depressing to realize how difficult it is to make ethical decisions concerning life and death under such nightmarish conditions.
    • 5/5
      From my Cannonball Read VI review ...

      This book was on my radar for 2014, and was lent to me by a coworker before I left work on New Year’s Eve. I spent most of my day off yesterday reading it, and finished it up walking to work and on my lunch break today. The book is nearly 500 pages long, so that should tell you about the quality of the writing. Five Days at Memorial is a fantastic book, and one that I would recommend to anyone interested in Hurricane Katrina, medical ethics, or just great investigative journalism.

      The book is broken into two parts: a description of the eponymous situation, which took place during and immediately after Hurricane Katrina at a private hospital in New Orleans, and the investigation into the actions of some of the doctors (one in particular) and the nurses involved. It also raises two separate but related questions: what is appropriate for clinicians to do when faced with disastrous circumstances in a healthcare facility, and is what the doctor and nurses are alleged to have done at Memorial in line with that? Finally, another issue of interest that gets mentioned but is not the focus of the book is the responsibility of hospitals and the state have to be prepared for foreseeable disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

      The basic situation at Memorial was similar to one facing many hospitals in 2005 (and, as shown with NYU Langione during Hurricane Sandy, was still an issue in 2012): the generator and many necessary electrical switches of the major hospital were in the basement or ground floor of the building and thus susceptible to flooding. When the levees stopped functioning the days after Hurricane Katrina came and went, the flooding reached Memorial and resulted in a generator that ultimately petered out. That, coupled with the inability to quickly evacuate patients, meant that the clinicians, patients, and other family members at the hospital faced very unpleasant circumstance. By the time everyone was evacuated, many patients had died, including many who died in a three hour period on the last day.

      The writing, the research, and the story Ms. Fink weaves together is gripping. It’s heartbreaking, and as someone who works in emergency management, it is one of my worst fears. The lack of planning, the lack of preparation, the lack of support from the parent company, it all is just devastating and infuriating. And yet … the hospital never ran out of food, or water. Clinicians were, for the most part, able to do amazing things in an utterly foul situation. But the big question around why did so many patients die on that last day, and whether Dr. Pou made the decision to help death along for those patients, is the focus. And while Dr. Pou makes public statements about doing 'what she had to do,' my take-away from this book is that while there certainly are times when this might be true, this specific instance, at this hospital, was not a situation where that statement needed to be made so far as euthanasia is concerned.

      Dr. Pou seems sketchy, and seemed to make HER case be about a hypothetical situation that she was never really facing (and would not reasonably have thought she was facing), but that she spoke of as if she had indeed experienced it. Based on my reading of this book, what Dr. Pou chose to do to those patients is not an example of making decisions in a no-win situation. Not to spoil it (and stop here if you plan to read the book and are not familiar with the story), but on that last day, the helicopters were there, and those patients could have been evacuated. They weren’t definitely going to die, and Dr. Pou acted as though they were. That seems to be her defense. And while it’s a defense worth interrogating for real situations where the options are death in tons of pain in a day or death easily now, those weren’t the choices facing those patients that day.

      As someone interested in medical ethics, I found the discussion of these issues to be well done. The topics of rationing medical care in an emergency, of deciding who should receive treatment first, and who should wait, are issues that need to be resolved. The clinical community is aware of this and is working on it. Hopefully books like this will make the issue more salient in the rest of the community as well.
    • 4/5
      Very well written and researched book. The book is divided into two parts. The first describes, with great detail, the terrible conditions that the staff and patients were dealing with at Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina. The second half shows the dedication and personal involvement that the prosecution brought to the case against the medical staff. From a journalist perspective, Ms. Fink did a good job showing all sides of a horrible situation. However, this is no dry journalistic piece. Ms. Fink writes with such color and humanity, that you can picture yourself within the walls of the hospital. A truly heartbreaking story.
    • 4/5
      I mean...wow. This book had me riveted. I read it every single chance I got. While yes, there are a lot of names and technical information, the gist of the story is clear. Fink does just hand you the information and allows you to make your own conclusion -- so I was seriously unhappy with how things turned out in the end. But wow. I am definitely telling everyone to read this!
    • 2/5
      I received [Five Days At Memorial] by [Sheri Fink] free in exchange for an honest review. [Five Days at Memorial] is a comprehensive account of the tragedy that happened at Memorial Hospital in the days following Hurricane Katrina. The weakness in this text was the massive amount of legal language. Although the legal ramifications that happened due to this event. It would have been more powerful if there was more emphasis on the human stories.
    • 4/5
      Second guessing decisions made during a crisis is never a good thing. And as we all know it's very easy to say "If it were me, I would have done this". While Ms. Fink takes us through vivid and harrowing scenes it does feel as though we are being led, page by page, by Ms. Fink' s own personal views instead of "just the facts". There were a few parts that felt like we were being lectured and focus was lost.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating in-depth look at the ravages of Hurricane Katrina on the Memorial Hospital in New Orleans. The first half of the book gives a play-by-play action of the storm and the efforts to rescue the staff, patients, and family members trapped in the hospital without electricity and running water. Difficult decisions were made as to whom would be rescued in what order and how to get them where they needed to be to be rescued. Some died before they could make it out.The second half deals with the aftermath. Were some of the staff to blame for the patients dying? Who made the life and death decisions and who carried them out? Did they only do what was necessary or did they step over the line?
    • 4/5
      I received a free review copy from the Early Reviewer Giveaway.... This book was a very tough read. I remembered a lot about Hurricane Katrina, but obviously the details of the live and death struggles at the Memorial Hospital were only mentioned along with all the other horrific things that happened.My husband is in the medical field and it was very hard for him to read this book, but he said it was very well researched and all the medical descriptions were well explained.I can only hope that the people in charge of big medical complexes, etc. have learned something about being prepared for possible emergencies.
    • 3/5
      This book was spun out of an article in ProPublica and New York Times and still I feel like there were parts that I was left wondering about. Sheri Fink has written a thoroughly exhaustive and in-depth overview at what happened at one Louisiana hospital in the days after Hurricane Katrina. She does an excellent job keeping track of a wide array of characters and government agencies as they interact (or fail to interact) with each other. Because there are so many intersecting storylines, it is a bit difficult for her to remain objective throughout the narrative and I felt at times she did let her personal opinion seep through. However, the reporting was so well done that it was easy to look past this and appreciate how compelling and interesting she manages to make the overall narrative. It is a long book however, and I felt like I had to push through some of the more tedious parts. I would recommend to anyone interested in people overcoming difficult situations and what happens when those situations end and people return back to a more normal life. Also would recommend for any hospital administrators or doctors involved with emergency medicine or infectious disease control.
    • 5/5
      This book tells the story of what happened at Memorial Medical Center following Hurricane Katrina as well as covering much of the aftermath. As such, the book is divided into a medical half dealing with the events of the hurricane through the final evacuation of the hospital and a legal half dealing with the criminal proceedings and ethics of what occurred. Despite being legally trained, I found the medical half of the book more gripping.Fink does an excellent job of conveying the chaos that overtook Memorial as the levies broke and the hospital began spiraling downward. She also conveys the growing sense of desperation and abandonment of those tasked with coping with Memorial's sickest patients as conditions deteriorate. Ultimately, Fink's primary success is to humanize the medical professionals making choices about patients including those dealing with the decision to euthanize some patients. The legal half of the book drags a bit although I don't think this is Fink's fault. Rather, the legal system itself dragged. Louisiana is not generally considered a model of American jurisprudence. Five Days at Memorial illustrates that fact well. The prosecution comes across as vainglorious and incompetent at times. The corporate defendants, particularly, Tenent, the owner of Memorial, seem motivated only to limit exposure. It is not an uplifting portrait. Rather, it shows all parties manipulating a system that should be a search for justice. In the case of Memorial, justice is clearly not forthcoming from the court system. Five Days at Memorial raises lots of moral and ethical issues for the medical community. Interestingly to me, it raised almost as many ethical question about how the legal system tried to grapple with what happened at Memorial Medical Center.
    • 4/5
      The subtitle of this book really ought to read "Or How Not to Run a Hospital During a Disaster!" The book details the happenings at what was then Memorial Hospital in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck the city and the five days following its landfall. Prosecutors eventually took three staff members before a jury seeking indictments for second degree murder for patients who died with abnormally high levels of morphine in their bodies where none should have been present. Was caring palliative care provided or did the staff intend to kill the sickest of the patients in order to have everyone out of the hospital by a 5:00 p.m. deadline on the fifth day? The first half of the book, which details the events in the hospital reads like a good suspense novel. The second half focuses on the aftermath and the legal proceedings and gets bogged down in minutiae on occasion. A true story that reads like a horror novel. Disturbing on many levels.
    • 4/5
      Five Days at Memorial is Sheri Fink's descriptive and unbiased story of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans. Fink describes in vivid detail the experience of healthcare workers and then provides frank discussion of moral and ethical concerns of post-disaster healthcare. The topics discussed are difficult but Fink provides a thought provoking story that begs us to question, have we learned anything from these post disaster situations?
    • 4/5
      An intelligent, compassionate book which at times is hard to read. It is extremely well-written and both the story of what happened at Memorial after Hurricane Katrina, and the legal fall-out are told in a compelling fashion. What made it difficult to read is what happened and the fact that it all could have been otherwise. It is a great portray of the difficult decisions made by the medical staff of Memorial, and the self-serving decisions of those who decided to use the case for their own gains.
    • 4/5
      From the prologue, I was hooked: these five nerve-wracking days where doctors had to make some of the toughest decisions of their lives are a palpitating read. Fink does a tremendous job at presenting multiple points of view: did Anna Pou, accused of euthanasia, along with a several colleagues, do the right thing? Did she have a choice? What were the circumstances and decisions that led to that ultimate action? It's sometimes a tough slog through the 500-some pages, but the account reads a like a mystery.Ultimately, what shocked me the most, was the slow reaction of upper management, the lack of ingenuity and resourcefulness by the staff, and the lack of accountability in the end. Fink tries not to be judgmental, but it's obvious that there was some sloppy decision-making which led to some untimely deaths.The book could have been shortened: the conclusion didn't do much for me, but the heart of the novel is a compelling read which casts the Katrina disaster in a completely new light.
    • 5/5
      How many of us could say that we have been in a life and death situation over a period of days in conditions as horrid as those during, and in the immediate aftermath of, Hurricane Katrina? Plans changed as the hours went by. There was confusion, heat, anxiety. Essential supplies dwindled. Those involved in the story detailed in this work experienced great tragedy. The book was well written, meticulously researched and very sobering.
    • 5/5
      I received review copy of this book from the publisher.This a a truly gripping saga of the day to day, indeed hour by hour, catastrophe that happened at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. There is heroism and dedication of the staff as they try to alleviate the suffering of their patients as conditions deteriorate. Electricity fails. The backup generators can't handle even reduced usage. The staff haven't been adequately trained or organized to cope with a crisis of this dimension. There is danger from rioting and gunfire outside the hospital Relief in the form of boats or helicopters aren't arriving as quickly as needed. Some decisions regarding patient care are made that will raise moral issues and have legal consequences when the emergency is over.While the first half of the book deals with events at Memorial Hospital, the second half tells the story of the aftermath over the next two years. Government officials and the courts and the medical community and the press and public opinion battle over how the triage of patients was handled and over the actions of staff that may have caused some of the approximately 75 deaths at the hospital.Both stories are equally fascinating. This book is a masterpiece of research. It manages to report a confusing story quite clearly. It humanizes the protagonists as it details their actions and reports their later explanations and justifications. Various points of view on the ethical issues involved are explored, but I think the author is careful to leave the reader with the responsibility of coming to her own conclusions.
    • 5/5
      I don't usually read non-fiction (not counting memoirs, most of which I find hard to resist). In fact, I just analyzed my library and only 10% were non-fiction. So, although I had read Fink's article in the Times Magazine, I would not have picked up this book on my own.That said, I was very happy to have received this from the publisher. It's a beautifully designed, hefty book that, despite its length and quantity of research, moves quickly. Some reviewers here have commented on an over-abundance of detail, and although I usually find fault with the journalistic style of TMI about their interview subjects (too much information, like the color of their hair, how they dress, where they live and went to school, etc.), in this case it added to the thoroughness of Fink's method. I also appreciated, unlike some others, the context-setting that she did occasionally, such as her asides about palliative care and the use of morphine in hospice care.The notes at the end are like a whole other meta book, showing again how thorough the author was.But what really happened there, and why? We'll never really know, and this lends even more power to the book. As we read, our own values and beliefs come up for scrutiny. What would we have done in those five days?
    • 3/5
      A riveting account of what happened when the everything failed at Memorial Hospital after Hurricane Katrina. Not only did the building and it's inner-workings fail, but the medical system and the government failed as well. It is a same that the hospital was not more prepared, or that the government sent no help to them, but it is most disheartening to know that the medical professionals may have overstepped their bounds. It is hard to say what anyone would do in this intense situation so I don't feel as though I can judge, but it surely seems someone should be accountable for this massive breakdown. A very well researched and well written account of the five days following Katrina at a hospital that felt the world had left them behind.
    • 4/5
      A compelling look at total breakdown of society as we know it, during and four days following the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina on the basic fabric of New Orleans.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but it was just too tedious. It gives a great overall picture of how mismanaged things were, but in way too much detail that really wasn't warranted.
    • 4/5
      Read this book for book club, otherwise I might not ave finished it. It reminded me of a newspaper feature, but then the author does write for newspapers. It was very dry in style, but it was about a very hard subject. We are currently looking back at Katrina and the damage it caused and the lessons we might have learned. In a few years we will look back at Sandy and see how much we have not applied the lessons that natural disasters continually reteach us.
    • 5/5
      This was a fascinating account of 5 days at Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of a hospital during a massive flood. Equally riveting, are the years following the disaster when some of the healthcare professionals were accused of euthanizing patients that they felt could not be evacuated from the hospital. This book raises so many ethical questions - euthanasia, the accountability of health care professionals and the corporations that run hospitals, and how to decide who to save when resources are limited. Such a great book for a book club discussion!
    • 5/5
      Took me a long time to read this, only because the entire situation is so intense. Rarely have I read a book where I had to take breaks (of days/weeks) in my reading. It leaves me with so many questions, but at same time, I am very aware I was not in that place at that time, under those conditions...
    • 3/5
      A worm’s eye view of a hospital coping through hurricane Katrina. A monumental marathon volume, exhaustive and exhausting.
      I had to modify my reading style to get through its 850 pages, I made reading a priority, which it should be, and kept at it, skimming a lot of the time (not usually my style).
      The middle section seemed repetitive. All the political and legal manoeuvring at the end, gave the story comic flavour, a bizarre fiasco.
    • 4/5
      A gripping, terrifying account of the events that transpired at a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina and in the days of flooding that followed.
    • 4/5
      Sheri Fink won the National Book Critics Circle Award for this gripping account of how a particular hospital behaved in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Although no indictments were ever issued, Dr. Anna Pou and several other health care workers were alleged to have killed patients with morphine, apparently for the convenience of the hospital, even after the arrival of rescue helicopters. It's clear that Fink is not a neutral observer, but she builds her case against Pou and the other health care workers carefully. I came away convinced that the hospital staff were guilty of homicide. The hospital's defenders have mounted a website that would be more convincing if they sourced their argument more thoroughly and if they were not anonymous (first rule of website credibility: never trust a site without an About Us section).This book changed how I feel about end-of-life issues and has certainly made me think about how I want my advance directive worded.
    • 4/5
      Ms. Fink depicts the horror of Hurricane Katrina and its consequences at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans. Lives were lost because of the actions and inactions of the Memorial professional staff. There was chaos, and well meaning doctors had to decide what was the most compassionate "care" for some very sick patients. Who should be evacuated first: the sickest, or those whom the doctors believed had the greatest chance of survival? Or those who could be most easily moved? And what of the rest? Ms. Fink gives a larger ethical context for this story, and follows it up with some comparable situations elsewhere. I highly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Well researched book about what happened at a hospital after hurricane Katrina. Many people died, more than any other New Orleans hospital during and after the hurricane. Author recounts what happened in the hospital and the aftermath in the courts. Much detail and analysis went into this book. It became a political issue with much finger pointing and blame. Thankfully, it was resolved and I agreed with the outcome.