Analysis Of Five Days At Memorial: Life And Death In A Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Introduction The novel Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink is a gripping recollection of experiences from the effects of the natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina. Ethical dilemmas were presented when dying patients and poor conditions met. Because of Katrina, the floodwaters caused power outages that eliminated the ability to use essential equipment to care for critically ill patients (p. 64). Patients on life support required nurses to manually ambu-bagging them in order to maintain ventilation (p. 125). As a result, patients trapped in the hospital were subject to bedsores, unbearable heat, and other unlivable conditions (p. 118).
One ethical dilemma was that medical staff at Memorial needed to
…show more content…
193). Healthcare providers are called to follow beneficence, the duty to promote the wellbeing of others (Essential learning: Law and ethics, 2022). More specifically, they can utilize paternalism, which is the ability to override the patient’s autonomy for their best interest. Some of the healthcare staff thought of following beneficence as using paternalism to heavily sedate the patients to the point of euthanization to prevent them from suffering a slow, painful death. They were using paternalism to decide that euthanization was more in favor of the patient’s best interest as most of the patients receiving sedation were not conscious enough to make the decision for …show more content…
In the case of deciding whether or not to euthanize the patients, I likely would have aligned more with Dr. Bryant King (p. 198). When presented with the idea of alleviating the patients’ suffering via euthanization, he thought that the idea was unnecessary at that time, as they had only been there for a couple days and still had supplies. He did not want to be involved in ending patients’ lives as he believed a doctor’s scope of practice did not involve euthanasia. I agree with his take in that I would try to do everything possible before considering euthanasia. I would not be comfortable knowingly taking somebody’s life, and I also agree in that I think nonmaleficence involves not killing patients
Summary Of Five Days At Memorial By Sheri Fink
1691 Words | 7 Pages4365 Policy Book Report on Five Days at Memorial The book Five Days at Memorial, written by Sheri Fink illustrates the catastrophic impact of hurricane Katrina and its unprepared poor choices made by doctors who injected patients that ended their life, and the petrify stories of individuals that took place in New Orleans in August of 2005. After a couple of months in 2005 Memorial Center was under investigation for an estimate of two thousand patients that were in danger and other patients who died because of the horrific storm that struck that night. New Orleans, had to make the hardest decision in who in the hospital gets to evacuate first after the generators and the power failed. New Orleans, being one of the small towns
Hurricane Katrine Case
560 Words | 3 PagesThe article describes the events that happened at Memorial Medical Center during and immediately following Hurricane Katrine in Uptown New Orleans. Once the power was knocked out and running water, the hospital tempter rose to about 100 degrees and resources became limited. As resources became limited Anna Pou was force to result to triage which she was not trained for, therefore her method of triage was questioned. Another doctor, Cook, who was the administrator of Memorial ; his methods of patient care were also questioned. In order to evacuate the hospital in the time frame given to him by the state police, Cook gave Pou instructions on how kill four ICU patients who were obese.
Summary Of Five Days At Memorial By Sheri Fink
946 Words | 4 PagesPrinciple theme Five days at Memorial by Sheri Fink tells the story of the days after Hurricane Katrina at one hospital in New Orleans. Memorial hospital owned by Texas based Tenet corporation had 312 short term acute care (STAC) beds, and leased the seventh floor to Lifecare for a long term acute care (LTAC) hospital. Lifecare’s LTAC at Memorial cared for medically fragile patients with long term complex medical needs. The hospital and health care providers received intense scrutiny after the hurricane due to the higher numbers of dead patients in comparison to comparable New Orleans hospitals, out of the 34 patients which died at the facility, 24 were Lifecare patients.
Summary Of Five Days Of Memorial By Sheri Fink
1065 Words | 5 PagesIn many hospital cases a group of people in charge are always trying to make the best decisions for patients. At times decisions are usually the hardest to comprehend when dealing with life or death circumstances. In the book Five Days of Memorial by Sheri Fink, hurricane Katrina hit, doctors and nurses made a triage decision to place people into three different categories depending on their conditions. In category three, patients remaining were DNR ( Do Not Resuscitate) patients, who aren't to be revived, which were the last patients to leave Memorial Hospital. Dr Ewing Cook, a chief medical officer, states in the book of Five Days At Memorial , that they “only had two choices:quicken their deaths or abandon them.”
Summary Of Five Days At Memorial By Sheri Fink
1622 Words | 7 PagesMistakes are inevitable. Before Hurricane Katrina most individuals evacuated the areas that were likely to be flooded. Hospitals, including Memorial, were not required to evacuate like everyone else. This meant that over two hundred patients were still in the building and even more staff when Katrina hit. Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink explores what happened inside the hospital during the aftermath of the storm and the legal battles that persisted long after the week people were trapped inside the building.
How Does Potts Death Affect The Intern
422 Words | 2 Pages“He’s dead, you can’t save him, there is nothing you can do about it” this sentence haunts medical professionals as doctors are trained to save lives. Perhaps what’s even more haunting is a doctor ending a patient’s life. Samuel Shem’s the House of God sheds light on the issue through its intern, Roy who goes through a rough time after killing a patient. Roy falsely thought he killed the patient to release his suffering, however, that’s not the case as he killed him to make peace with his own death.
New Orleans Health Care Case Study
485 Words | 2 PagesNevertheless the most sobering cause to the health care disaster during Katrina is that the system itself is broken with millions uninsured and poor planning all the way up the federal government. With them stating the only way to truly prevent this from happening again “is reform the health system, making it accessible, affordable, and quality-oriented for
Physician Assisted Suicide Persuasive Speech
1697 Words | 7 PagesIn claiming that the procedure allows patients to have dignity at death is flawed because the purpose of the medical profession is to ensure a dignified life. In accordance with the physician’s code of ethics or Hippocratic oath, physicians are not allowed to do harm to their patients because their role is to provide a dignified life with health to the community. Instead of helping people kill themselves, we should offer them premium medical care and solace human presence.
Essay On Euthanasia In Canada
874 Words | 4 PagesIt is believed that once practicing physician-assisted suicides becomes an acceptable concept in society, the next steps will easily be taken toward unethical actions such as involuntary euthanasia. Edmund D. Pellegrino, MD, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Medical Ethics at Georgetown University claims that our healthcare system is too obsessed with costs and principles of utility. He defies the belief that the slippery slope effect is no more than a prediction, by reminding the outlooks and inclinations of our society. Furthermore, he believes there comes a day that incompetent patients and those in coma won’t be asked for their permission to use euthanasia. The Netherlands is another example of such misuse.
Rhetorical Analysis: Fink's Recovery
455 Words | 2 PagesThe article broke down one of the most horrific natural disasters of the century. For many, the wounds have yet to heal and with this article, those individuals and their families are forced to show us their scars again. This was equally hard for Fink to report after talking to survivors from Katrina. She unbiasedly informed her audience who may have been oblivious to what the conditions were for just this hospital alone. The help in the recovery of these sick and injured souls was not treated as a life or death emergency like it should have been.
Physician Assisted Suicide Analysis
1013 Words | 5 PagesIn the documentary, Bill Moyers talks to three terminally ill patients, their families, and their doctors about the concerns with physician-assisted suicide (PAS). PAS allows a terminally ill patient to hasten an inevitable and unavoidable death through a lethal dose. The patients considered PAS in order to end their prolonged suffering. The legal role of advance directives in end of life issues allows a patient to specify how he wishes to be treated by a healthcare provider during a progressively weakened state. Advance directives may provide patients with freedom to choose end of life treatment, but moral and religious implications, the ethical battle between a physician’s duty to care and inner-conscious, and state laws pose threats to PAS.
A Death Of One's Own Movie Analysis
642 Words | 3 PagesThe ethical principle of autonomy provides for respect for the patient’s autonomy to make decisions and choices concerning their life and death. Respecting the patient’s autonomy goes against the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence. There also exists the issue of religious beliefs the patient, family, or the caretaker holds, with which the caretaker has to grapple. The caretaker thus faces issues of fidelity to patient welfare by not abandoning the patient or their family, compassionate provision of pain relief methods, and the moral precept to neither hasten death nor prolong life.
Dr Anna Pou Case Summary
639 Words | 3 PagesHowever, this should be a learning experience that hospitals have to be more prepared for situations like this to happen. A number of factors like how the Memorial Medical Center was built was a huge problem, the power sources were vulnerable to the hurricane and were damaged. The wall 's structure of the hospitals was too weak and were able to get destroyed before help arrived. The faculty of the hospital were also in need of preparation on how to deal with the situation. We have to keep this in mind and remember that health care professionals will always have the best interest for us for our health and
Five Days At Memorial Analysis
1632 Words | 7 PagesThe novel Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink gives an inside view of what happened at Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina (2005); a disaster inside of a disaster. The lack of preparedness or ethical decision making is quite disappointing, considering Memorial hospital is located in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans is well below sea level, and experiences frequent hurricanes and flooding. Memorial hospital itself had little to no plan for evacuating patients once the storm hit. Without power, many of the patients, especially those who were ventilator dependent, became at risk of death.
Examples Of Ethical Dilemmas In Nursing
865 Words | 4 PagesMilitary Nurse’s Dilemma Chi Tiet University of Michigan - Flint Nurses are a group of professionals who faces a variety of ethical dilemmas while working. Therefore, these dilemmas cannot only impact on their personalities but also affect their patients. However, ethical dilemmas are argumentative and difficult to deal with, so there is no “right” or “wrong” answer for them. In a military nurse’s dilemma, a military RN is ordered to force feeding a terrorist prisoner while he is undergoing interrogation, and the prisoner is on a hunger strike protesting. The nurse is torn, but fearing of reprisal if orders are disobeyed, so the nurse is appalled at the over-riding a patient’s wish by force feeding him agains his wish.
More about Analysis Of Five Days At Memorial: Life And Death In A Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Summary Of Five Days At Memorial By Sheri Fink
1691 Words | 7 PagesHurricane Katrine Case
560 Words | 3 PagesSummary Of Five Days At Memorial By Sheri Fink
946 Words | 4 PagesSummary Of Five Days Of Memorial By Sheri Fink
1065 Words | 5 PagesSummary Of Five Days At Memorial By Sheri Fink
1622 Words | 7 PagesHow Does Potts Death Affect The Intern
422 Words | 2 PagesNew Orleans Health Care Case Study
485 Words | 2 PagesPhysician Assisted Suicide Persuasive Speech
1697 Words | 7 PagesEssay On Euthanasia In Canada
874 Words | 4 PagesRhetorical Analysis: Fink's Recovery
455 Words | 2 PagesPhysician Assisted Suicide Analysis
1013 Words | 5 PagesA Death Of One's Own Movie Analysis
642 Words | 3 PagesDr Anna Pou Case Summary
639 Words | 3 PagesFive Days At Memorial Analysis
1632 Words | 7 PagesExamples Of Ethical Dilemmas In Nursing
865 Words | 4 Pages