After reporter Sheri Fink wrote her searing, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times Magazine article, “The Deadly Choices at Memorial,” which examined the tumultuous effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans’s Memorial Medical Center, she knew the article was not large enough to say what she wanted to about that catastrophic event and the lessons learned. Even her editor at the magazine said she had enough material for two volumes. In Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown, Aug.), she was able to delve into some of the larger issues that the article touched upon.
One of the biggest controversies that came out of the hospital’s handling of patients during the Katrina disaster was the decision to hasten the deaths of those believed to have little chance of survival. In her book, Fink does not rush to judgment; instead, she wants her readers to understand the context in which these difficult choices were made. She says, “The power had gone out, the hospital was surrounded by water, the conditions were miserable. You could imagine just trying to take care of the people in the heat with none of the tools of modern medicine. They had decided to put the sickest patients last at a certain point—that was kind of a fateful decision.”
Fink points out that the health-care people at Memorial had opposing views about how to handle these patients. In her book, she examines the ethical and practical issues from different angles so readers can come to their own decisions. “There were doctors who said, ‘This is absolutely wrong. People don’t appear to be suffering to the degree where it would be medically appropriate to sedate them or give them these drugs. I won’t be a part of this.’ There were others who said, ‘These people are suffering and they need the medicine for their comfort.’ And there were yet others who said, ‘We need to hasten their deaths because these people aren’t going to make it and we need to get out.’ I certainly have a great amount of empathy for everyone who is put into that situation.”
The reporter, who was trained as a doctor and has been an aid worker during many natural disasters and armed conflicts, hopes both health-care professionals and ordinary citizens can learn from these experiences. “Preparedness is really key,” she says, “thinking about these things beforehand. There are ethical guidelines and standards that are applicable. If we keep those in our heads as health professionals, it’s going to be easier to respond.”
For the rest of us, she notes that a lot of decisions about how resources get allocated in disasters are made behind closed doors and that it’s time for more of a public discussion about these issues: “These aren’t medical questions as much as they are questions of morals and values.”
Sheri Fink will be at the Adult Buzz Author Stage today at 10 a.m. at the Downtown Stage.
