“An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”- Dallas Morning NewsĪfter Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina-and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice-from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter.The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+.She has lectured to large groups of doctors on “disaster ethics” and triage, showing her mug shot on screen and calling for protections againstĬriminalizing medical judgment, but leaving out why she was arrested, or any mention that patients at Memorial died after health care workers injected them with powerful drugs, or what her involvement was with that.NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Pou became a campaigner for changing the standards of medical care during disasters and for laws that would immunize doctors and nursesĪgainst civil lawsuits for their work during disasters.

What I think you’re picking up on toward the end of the book is that Dr. Pou and saw her as a hero or at least someone who tried hard to help others at a very difficult time and who was punished by the very fact of being arrested and sued by patients’įamilies (a grand jury refused to indict her on criminal charges, and all of the civil cases against her, which included other parties, have since Certainly some people in the book expressed the opinion that she should have spent time in jail or lost her medical license,Īnd others in the book supported Dr. That is a question for the justice system and those affected by her actions to answer, not me. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation: Fink discussed the chaos at Memorial, how she pieced her story together, whether we’reīetter prepared for the next disaster, and more. In his review for The Times, Jason Berry called the book “social reporting of the first rank.” In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Fink greatly expands the story, reconstructing the crisis at the hospital and the complicated legal and ethical questions that followed in its wake.

Her coverage of the events at Memorial in a 2009 joint assignment for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine. Authorities investigated whether some of those patients, who were found to have elevated levels of morphine, had been euthanized by desperate and exhausted doctors. One of the most compelling stories to emerge from the devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina involved the death of several patients at the city’s Memorial Medical Center, which had lost power during

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink