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

✍ Scribed by Fink, Sheri

• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group;Broadway Books
• Year: 2013;2016
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 516 KB
• Edition: First paperback edition
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0307718972

✦ Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Finks 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 reconstructs5 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 disastersand 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 Hardcover edition.

Winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the 2014 Ridenhour Book Prize
Winner of the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest
One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2013