Sheri Fink > Quotes

“Life and death in the critical first hours of a calamity typically hinged on the preparedness, resources, and abilities of those in the affected community with the power to help themselves and others in their vicinity. Those who did better were those who didn’t wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“But what does the “greatest good” mean when it comes to medicine? Is it the number of lives saved? Years of life saved? Best “quality” years of life saved? Or something else?”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Emergencies are crucibles that contain and reveal the daily, slower-burning problems of medicine and beyond—our vulnerabilities; our trouble grappling with uncertainty, how we die, how we prioritize and divide what is most precious and vital and limited; even our biases and blindnesses.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Sometimes the ethical—the most important ethical question sometimes is the one you ask not at the moment of crisis, but the duty you have to anticipate certain kinds of crises and avoid them.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Rather than thinking about exceptional moral rules for exceptional moral situations,” Harvard’s Dr. Lachlan Forrow, who is also a palliative care specialist, wrote, “we should almost always see exceptional moral situations as opportunities for us to show exceptionally deep commitment to our deepest moral values.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Concepts of triage and medical rationing are a barometer of how those in power in a society value human life.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Good should be done regardless of the difficulties of the time and regardless of the level of power or importance that one possesses. (Dr. Boro Lazic)”
― Sheri Fink, War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival

“Another sister had worked at Tulane Hospital in downtown New Orleans. Tulane was also dark, hot, and surrounded by water, but officials at its parent corporation, HCA, had been proactive about arranging for private helicopters and buses to rescue patients, employees, and their families, betting correctly that government assets would prove insufficient. The process of an orderly if slow evacuation had kept panic at bay. She knew of no patients who had died at Tulane. This sister was able to laugh and joke about her experiences.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Despite the request, and the fact that executives from some Tenet hospitals, like Atlanta, had already expressed a willingness to provide evacuation support, Tenet officials continued to rely on governmental resources to respond to the emergency.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“We’ve got a duty to die,” Lamm said, “and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“When I made my mother a DNR, I did not know it meant "do not rescue.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Charity staff also kept up the hospital routine despite the bizarre conditions. They kept patients in their rooms, continued to provide services like physical and occupational therapy, and encouraged workers to maintain shifts and a regular sleep schedule. This signaled that the situation was under some degree of control and kept panic to a minimum. There was an active effort to stem rumors. “You can only say it if you’ve seen it,” staff were told. Perhaps most important, Charity’s leaders avoided categorizing a group of patients as too ill to rescue. The sickest were taken out first instead of last.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Those who did better were those who didn't wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“The long-repressed masses outside the hospital, brandishing looted guns and rifles, would revolt and overtake them. The enemy was near. A rowdy gang squatted in the credit union building across the street from Memorial.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“As they discussed disaster preparedness that afternoon, Rick Simmons argued that Katrina showed what worked best was a central, top-to-bottom command. He gave the example of the Coast Guard, perhaps not knowing that many in the Guard attributed their Katrina successes, conversely, to the initiative of ground-level crew members who were empowered to solve problems impromptu and worked with great autonomy.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Gunshots assumed to have been aimed at rescuers may have been gunshots aimed, however misguidedly, at alerting those rescuers to the presence of desperate survivors.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“They made a beautiful couple, with personalities as different as their heights.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“We do not wish to capitalize the sufferings of human beings, but to relieve them.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“A day later, a fax came into the unit from an attorney for LifeCare Hospitals of New Orleans. It reported that nine LifeCare patients on the seventh floor at Memorial had died under suspicious circumstances. Although we are just beginning to collect the relevant facts, we have information that the patients involved were administered morphine by a physician (Dr. Poe, whom we believe is not an employee of LifeCare) at a time when it appeared that the patients could not be successfully evacuated.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“pumping-system failure that followed the Category Three Hurricane Betsy in 1965.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“journalists began uncovering real and troubling evidence of several white vigilante attacks on unarmed black men after the storm, and of police misconduct, questionable shootings, and a cover-up.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“into, ah…call…it’s called Cheyne-Stokes respiration”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“The hospital was a microcosm of these larger failures, with comprised physical infrastructure, compromised operating systems, and compromised individuals. And also instances of heroism. The scenario was familiar to students of mass disasters around the world. Systems always failed. The official response was always unconscionably slow. Coordination and communication were particularly bad. These were truths Americans had come to accept about other people's disasters. It was shocking to see the scenario play out at home.”
― Sheri Fink

“the ‘hand of God’ will not be blamed as often for what the hand of man has neglected to do.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“I said I am a nurse, and that is what nurses do.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“The scenario was familiar to students of mass disasters around the world. Systems always failed. The official response was always unconscionably slow. Coordination and communication were particularly bad. These were truths Americans had come to accept about other people’s disasters. It was shocking to see the scenario play out at home.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing key parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Nearly three out of four convictions that were later reversed through DNA evidence with the help of the US nonprofit group the Innocence Project were based on faulty eyewitness identification.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“The difference between something ethical and something illegal was, as Cook would put it, “so fine as to be imperceivable.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

“Hospital maintenance men would put on waders and pull colleagues to work in a battered metal fishing boat kept suspended from the ceiling in the parking garage basement.”
― Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital