wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Please folks, go read Fink's entire article. The situation in that hospital was very different than what many of the commentators seem to think, and racism (white doctor's fear of staying in the hospital) seems to have played a much greater role than Fink was willing to note on air. My impression is that a few doctors and nurses decided, against the protests of many (including family members who were actually there in the hospital!) to kill perhaps as many as 40 patients so that doctors, nurses and others could flee the hospital.

The fundamental questions here aren't about medical professionals in extreme situations; they're about medical professionals who panicked and, it turns out, grossly overreacted. And about how shockingly easy it seems to be for a small number of medical professionals to kill patients and explain that away as "giving them comfort."

Re CL's comment (#7):

Doctor Fink's ea is an attempt to approach this story in a balanced manner. To draw the conclusion you obviously desire would indeed be "irresponsible and sensational."

I don't understand how the Hippocratic is interpreted if it is flexible at all. If this can happen and pass through a grand jury what about in the case of Kervorkian, I find his actions to be more sensible.

I don't understand how the Hippocratic is interpreted if it is flexible at all. If this can happen and pass through a grand jury what about in the case of Kervorkian, I find his actions to be more sensible. I'm highly suspicious of these doctor's actions.

S from BK [10]

She hasn't practiced because, as you hear in this interview, SHE'S INCAPABLE OF MAKING A CONCRETE DECISION. She's a mealy-mouthed, fence-sitting, bleeding-heart liberal. I wouldn't want her in charge of my health

I applaud the doctors in Memorial hospital for making this brave decision! It is time that we Americans recognize that life should be preserved at all cost. Quality of life should be preserved, and if there is no hope for improving quality of life, we should usher these very sick people into a peaceful death --that's the humanitarian thing to do. Just look at the peaceful deaths of both Jacky and Teddy Kennedy-- They were not left on respirators for months on end. We all deserve such honorable passing. ( I am 71 years old).

why aren't we asking why bush did not send in the military to help get people out??

CL. I feel the same and it makes me angry with her. suspicious.

As a nurse we are taught that in a fire in case of evacuation we are first to move the physically able and least ill off the floor before turning to the most ill and least mobile. During Katrina in the midst of the chaos there were many people who felt unsure that there would be competent or consistent aid brought to them in time to rescue even the most able of these patients. It's not surprising to me that the decision was made to offer compassionate escape to those who might otherwise starve to death or drown.

Don't doctors do triage during war and leave the very sick to die ?

I am from New Orleans and two of my friends' parents were working in Charity hospital during Katrina. During the week before rescue, Charity hospital ran out of food and water, and the staff was extremely traumatized by the experience and were reduced to feeding themselves through IVs. I was wondering if you could speak a little more about the physical conditions of the doctors at Memorial hospital during the flooding.

I would withhold judgment on these individual cases, since we do not know the whole story. I think it is important to point out, however, that it is accepted practice that in wartime and in a mass casualty incident, general triage practices can be reversed so that the sickest and "likely to die" are treated last. This is to preserve scarce resources and to attempt to save the most people (and, in the war scenario, possibly to get people back on the battlefield).

Also, if we're going to get personal - why hasn't Dr. Fink ever practiced medicine?

From my understanding, the national guards, police, military and whoever were busy protecting material goods rather than doing their duties.....saving lives

Does the Hippocratic Oath have any provisions for natural disasters that people beyond the doctors hadn't prepared the city for? Or that a government hadn't responded to?

What is the point of this person's report? She seems unwilling to draw any conclusions, and absent those conclusions, her reporting draws dangerously close to being irresponsible and sensational.

I read the story in full, I would feel quite differently about it if the doctor's attitude was that she was in a horrible situation she wasn't trained for and did the best she could at the time given her own fear of dying in the storm and concern for the patients' suffering, but Pou is completely self-righteous about what she did and acts as if it was normal end of life care, even saying "we do this all the time to dying patients, just not so many all at once." I know that doctors sometmes (often?) knowingly give possibly fatally high doses of morphine at the very end to patients who are suffering, and I had even thought that was good if that's what the patient wanted, but in this story they killed patients who begged to be rescued, and killed a bunch of patients in a special unit for people in critical condition who wanted everything to be done to save them. They also chose to kill or not evacuate all the patients witn DNRs which I found very scary. I do not (because I am young and I think I could recover from a life threatening event) want a DNR ... I have been asked in the hospital ... but I always assumed I would want one if my condition really were terminal or if I were very old and now after reading this I have my doubts about that.

did the hospital eventually flood?

Can we please take this argument away from decisions individual doctors, nurses and other hospital workers made in a time of great crisis and remember that the U.S. government left these people without support that we come to expect in an advanced nation.

Where were the heroes? In a society that is anguishing over everyone having healtth care, where were those who would stay with their patients? A captain goes down with his ship. Why not a physician?

If people died unnecessarily in any of those hospitals it is a tragedy. But I don't think we should blame the doctors and nurses, we should blame the American government that left those people rotting. Most of the victims of Katrina were needless deaths, because our government let them drown and rot. How can we blame the doctors who were doing all they could humanly do under post-apocalyptic conditions?

Where are the wrongful death suits against the Bush administration?

brownie you're doing a great job!