Discussion 3: Five Days at Memorial Book summary and discussion questions provided by http://www.litlovers.com.Links to an external site. 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.) __________________________________ No, you don't have to read the entire book, although I recommend you add it to your personal list of future reads! Two links, one to an abbreviated version of the NY Times Magazine article and one to the full version, are here to whet your interest, digest, and ruminate on. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-deadly-choices-at-memorial-826 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30doctors.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. Discuss the following situational ethical questions in narrative format, following the discussion rubric 1. To understand the pressures doctors and nurses faced, can you imagine exactly what it felt like to be trapped in a sweltering hospital in a city that had descended into chaos? How do you believe you would have fared under the conditions at New Orleans' Memorial? 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. What legal and ethical standards must health care personnel 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? 5.