Katrina: Memorial Hospital Patient Deaths

Well, that took me a long time to read. Having read some blogs of nurses who were working through the hurricane, I can only say I can't judge as I wasn't in their awful position. They were left without any outside support whatsoever. How long could they really bag patients manually? I also wonder why the only people ever charged with any wrong doing in Katrina were health care personnel. There was so much fault at local to federal levels, the NOPD were also shooting at people.

In 1994 I was bathing a patient in the iCU when the Northridge earthquake hit. Our emergency generator fell off iwhatever it was on and we lost power. We used flashlights, mine was a little one in my teeth.

Both my patients were on ventilators. We did manage to take turns bagging them. About 2 hours later the sun came up and staff came in to help. Many who were not scheduled.

The NICU babies were taken to the ER where there was a battery light. Ambulatory patients were too. Of course the elevators didn't work.

But most of the city was safe so long as you wore shoes. Lots of cut feet from frightened people running outside barefoot in their night clothes.

In a few hours the city got the power back on.

This was VERY different from the staff at Memorial bagging people for four days!
With seemingly no end in sight.

And the rumors of shootings frightened Tenet executives limiting the assistance their corporate helicopters provided.
The media made mistakes - http://www.reason.com/news/show/36327.html

I think we need to do all we can to make our facilities plan and prepare. Meet regularly to plan for weather, pandemic, or other disasters.
But still the unexpected can happen.

I pray for the staff, patients, and families who had to experience that.

That was a long one, but very much worth the read!

I wasn't sure I would get through all 18 pages of this article...until I started reading it. It was positively compelling and worth the read.

Every nurse should read this article. It should be mandatory reading.

I had one question during Katrina, and it's the same one I have now.

If CNN, FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, the Red Cross, even volunteers from UNC could get there...

Why couldn't our government?

Nerd...couldn't? or wouldn't?
I have long since thought there was more to the Pou case than met the eye. Very long, disturbing article.

For one, I was disgusted at the way this country's government handled Katrina; if anyone deserves the indictment for so many deaths, it was the feds.

i remember watching the coverage of the disaster and wondering where was the government?? why hadnt they come in to help??

i saw the journalists crying over what they saw. i saw people scared to death and gun fire in the background.

then all the sudden....Bam! the coverage completely changed. one minute they were saying "this is a travesty!!!" and the next thing you know..the media was saying "isnt the way our government is helping great?"

i sat there thinking "wth?? i know what i saw. i know what ive been watching for days".
then all the sudden they basically act as if it never happened.

i think the media was doing a fantastic job of reporting what was happening in New Orleans UNTIL the government stepped in. THATS when the media got it wrong. they had it right when they were reporting what was really happening. and it was sickening.

thinking of what the doctors and nurses and patients went thru at this hospital is horrific. i can only imagine what they were going thru.

we all saw how new orleans was ignored by FEMA and the government for days before they stepped in to help.

there was noone coming to help these people. for 4 days they did whatever they could to just survive inside that hospital. there was no way they could do anything more.

for people to say what they did was wrong...well, i think unless you were there...you will never know.

i will not judge them. i probably would have helped them had i been there.

thank you for posting this article! it was great.

I was outside Picayune when Katrina came in. I must have had 12 code browns within 10min, scared ********. My brother was on duty for local ems around Biloxi and had cousins stationed around Gulfport with the Mississippi Nat. Guard. Went 3 weeks without running water or electrical power in south mississippi. So I think I can speak quiet matter of fact about the devastation and suffering many people went through. And I can tell you right now, that there was no way on earth any government or nation could have prepared for Katrina. Of course now after playing monday morining quarterback we can say what we should have would have done. But it really shows you that the government is limited to what it can do. Now there is always going to be people who will blame all of this on Bush, Brown, Cheney or Nagin, heck whoever is in charge gets the blame...now if Katrina II came and hit The Big Easy this week the same crap would happen, people will still be stuck getting sunburned on their roofs, nurses and docs would still be stuck in hospitals waiting for help and thugs would still be shooting at rescuers. this time we would be howling at the current admin.

Yes, I remember even Shep Smith and Geraldo of Fox News being totally disgusted and telling it like it was.

For 2 days Bush made no mention of sending help. He was busy selling his story of WMDs in Iraq. So many could have been evacuated before the storm but the government wouldn't approve sending buses. Even private citizens who drove their own buses to help evacuate New Orleans pre-Katrina were turned away by the feds!

The poor in New Orleans (many African American) don't have cars or the means to evacuate. Bush didn't care about them until the public outcry forced him to save face and finally do something.

I just hope we learned something that will help us during the next disaster.