Five Days at Memorial - Sheri Fink

In a nutshell

This book opens by describing the events that took place at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, highlighting in particular the challenges that staffed face due to loss of power and rising flood waters.  Fink highlights the decisions that staff made regarding patient care and how these decisions would follow some of the nurses and doctors after Katrina.  In particular, Fink looks at the issue of euthanasia and its place in disaster response.  The second half of the book follows the investigation into potentially hastened deaths at Memorial and whether the medical professionals involved should be held responsible.  

Did I like it?

I wanted to like this book more than I did.  I expected it to be an amazing account of the events and to some extent it was, but there were so many characters that I found myself constantly trying to remember who was who.  This had the effect of "taking me out of the book" and hence, I never became immersed in the experiences of these doctors and nurses.  I do wonder if this book would have been better if I had read it in hard copy where I could easily have referred back to the list of characters.  Perhaps the Kindle is to blame for my reaction?  At any rate, while I didn't dislike the book, it failed to have the same impact as other non-fiction books (e.g., Spillover, Kinglake 350).

Will you like it?

If you find ethical dilemmas interesting, you may find the debate about euthanasia to be of interest.  I think, however, there are better books written about disaster response (e.g., the aforementioned Kinglake 350).

What else happened while I was reading this book?

Easter came and went.  We went on some amazing hikes.  Went heavy on the kids movies: Lego and The Muppet sequel.  The former was amazing, while the latter was just passable.