First of all, the cover design of this book is brilliant. When I first saw it I was disappointed because I wanted to read the book but obviously the copy that was sent to me had been water damaged...but no, that is the way it is supposed to look. Gee, how fitting for a Hurricane Katrina story. But my reaction was the same at least a couple of times at home when I glanced at the book and was surprised all over again by the water damage.
But enough about the great design, when you read the book you realize what was NOT well designed, and that was the response to a life threatening hurricane in New Orleans, in the hospital, in the corporate structure where the hospital fit/did not fit. It is hard to even begin talking about the story told by the book without just marveling at the sheer number of things that have to go wrong to end up in a situation like this hospital. The questions that arise have to do with life and death, they are not something that you can just figure will work themselves out in a crisis. What happened at Memorial was a crisis of leadership and training as much as a crisis of medical ethics and behavior. It is hard to decide what part of this is worse...where should you focus your shock and disbelief? In the end I can only hope that lessons were truly learned and this type of thing won't happen again. Of course that is only wishful thinking...for that to be a reality there would have to be a change and there really isn't any evidence of that happening.
An incredibly powerful book.
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