2010 PROSE Award Winner for Nursing & Allied Health Sciences! 2010 AJN Book of the Year Award Winner in Public Interest and Creative Works! "The accounts are vivid, colorful, descriptive, intense, and often horrific and give cross-sectional views of life in the trenches during this disasterÖThis book is a rich primary source for both historians and disaster preparedness planners. It's not only a tribute to the courage of the nurses, but should also serve as a guide for policy planners hoping to avoid less than optimal responses to future crises."--AJN "[T]he book...fascinates simply for its raw documentation of the dreadful events and conditions endured by nurses, doctors, and ancillary staff as they struggled to care for critically ill patients without electricity, running water, air conditioning systems, and other resources. Five years after the levees broke, the horror and chaos of Katrina is still fresh in these accounts. Through the stories, readers are transported into the hospitals as nurses heroically work together to evacuate babies from NICUs and vented patients from ICU, try to calm patients, family members, and coworkers, and make do with the equipment and supplies theyíve got."--National Nurse "Don't ever think that this can't happen to you. You are going to read this and it's going to sound like we created this scenario, but this is a real scenario that happened." --Pam, Memorial Medical Center "Everything that was battery operated eventually died. There were no monitors...we tried to take care of people in the most humane way possible." --Lois, Lindy Boggs Medical Center Nursing in the Storm: Voices from Hurricane Katrina takes you inside six New Orleans hospitals-cut off from help for days by flooding-where nurses cared for patients around the clock. In this book, nurses from Hurricane Katrina share what they did, how they coped, what they lost, and what they are doing now in a city and health care infrastructure still rebuilding, still in jeopardy. In their own words, the nurses tell what happened in each hospital just before, during, and after the storm. Danna and Cordray provide an intimate portrait of the experience of Katrina, which they and their colleagues endured. Just a few of the heroic nurses you'll find inside: Rae Ann and twenty others, including her husband and children, who wait on a hospital roof for help to come Lisa, in the midst of caring for patients, who has not heard from her husband in 5 days Roslyn, who has 800 people in her hospital when the power generators shut down Linda, who uses bed sheets to write out help messages on a hospital roof, hoping someone will see them The book also discusses how to plan and prepare for future disasters, with a closing chapter documenting the "lessons learned" from Katrina, including day-to-day health care delivery in a city of crisis. This groundbreaking work serves as a testament to nurses' professionalism, perseverance, and unwavering dedication.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter “An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death? Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award

Defending Hurricane Katrina's most notorious couple. In the media storm that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005, nursing home owners Sal and Mabel Mangano were vilified for allegedly causing the deaths of 35 residents of St. Rita's Nursing Home in low-lying St. Bernard Parish. This book, written by the lawyer who defended them, reveals the gripping, true story behind the couple's heartrending decision not to evacuate and their persecution at the hands of the government sworn to protect them.

As Hurricane Katrina barreled towards New Orleans, Louisiana, hospitals across the city prepared for the coming storm. Staff members streamed in and began stockpiling food, water, medical supplies, and fuel. But what no one foresaw was that their emergency generators would flood and fail, leaving hospitals stranded in the rising water with no air conditioning or much of their equipment and unable to evacuate patients and staff by land. Throughout the devastating winds, rising waters, and August heat, nurses stuck by their patients. They improvised new emergency procedures and methods of record-keeping and patient transport, all without power or reliable information. These angels saved lives while their world fell apart around them. The individual voices of nurses come from six New Orleans-area hospitals--Veterans Affairs, Pendleton Memorial, Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans, Charity, Tulane Medical Center, and Ochsner--as well as Lambeth House retirement community and the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge. They speak to the vital importance and ingenuity of nurses under pressure. This work examines the disaster plans used by each facility, examines what the most successful procedures were, and provides recommendations for preparing nurses for disaster response. Voices of Angelsis a case study and planning guide essential for facilities facing hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, and a host of other issues that affect medical centers nationwide.

Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud owners of a near-derelict croft house—a farmer’s stone cottage—on “a small acre” of land. Mary assumed duties as the island’s district nurse. Call the Nurse is her account of the enchanted years she and her family spent there, coming to know its folk as both patients and friends. In anecdotes that are by turns funny, sad, moving, and tragic, she recalls them all, the crofters and their laird, the boatmen and tradesmen, young lovers and forbidding churchmen. Against the old-fashioned island culture and the grandeur of mountain and sea unfold indelible stories: a young woman carried through snow for airlift to the hospital; a rescue by boat; the marriage of a gentle giant and the island beauty; a ghostly encounter; the shocking discovery of a woman in chains; the flames of a heather fire at night; an unexploded bomb from World War II; and the joyful, tipsy celebration of a ceilidh. Gaelic fortitude meets a nurse’s compassion in these wonderful true stories from rural Scotland.

Nurses on the Front Line examines how nurses have responded to both natural and man-made disasters in the United States, Canada, and other nations over the course of the previous and current centuries. It documents 12 disasters, including the Galveston hurricane of 1900, the 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire, September 11th, and Hurricane Katrina. More than a simple narrative, this text provides intimate first-hand experiences-through letters, memoirs, oral histories, and newspaper articles-of health care workers, survivors, and civic and private organizations that reflect on the character and speed of responders during a disaster. It illustrates how nurses can restore stability in the aftermath of a chaotic event and analyzes the nurses' role as part of a community response. Key features: Explains in detail what nurses can expect during disasters and what measures to take when disaster strikes Examines previous natural disasters and calls into question whether disasters were caused by accidents or intentional/unintentional human error Discusses policy implications of the different disasters, focusing on the federal government's response Investigates the roles and effects of race, class, and gender during a disaster

The book that finally gives a physicians inside story of the evacuation of Memorial Medical Center following Katrina a gripping tale of abandonment and survival. A toxic stew of floodwaters surrounded Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Katrina when the levees broke. Over two thousand people were trapped in the squalid conditions without security as the death toll steadily rose inside. Bodies stacked up in the chapel as the temperature soared in the overcrowded hospital and the situation became increasingly desperate. Doctors, nurses, and staff worked around the clock, caring for those inside and trying to evacuate the facility, also known as Baptist Hospital. Allegations of euthanasia would later make headlines across the country and be investigated by state and local officials. Code Blue: A Katrina Physicians Memoir finally tells the inside story of the hellish nightmare those who struggled to survive the ordeal were cast into. Dr. Richard Deichmann, the hospitals chief of medicine and one of the leaders of the evacuation, gives his compelling account of the rapidly deteriorating state of affairs at the hospital. He takes us through the daily horrors and numbing disappointments. This gripping tale of survival, despite betrayal and abandonment by the authorities, may change forever the way you view the threat of a mass disaster. What Others are Saying about Code Blue: A Katrina Physicians Memoir As a physician who has been on hurricane duty for prior storms, I thought I could imagine what it would be like if we were hit by a severe storm. I was wrong. This book should serve as a warning about what can happen when basic modern conveniences such as power, running water, communications and safety are taken away. - Karen Blessey, MD