1. To understand the pressures doctors and nurses faced, readers needed to understand how it felt to be trapped in a sweltering hospital in a city that had descended into chaos. Do you think Sheri Fink does a good job of recreating those conditions?
2. What do you think of the behavior and decisions made by the medical staff at Memorial? Where you shocked by the lethal injections of morphine? According to Dr. Ewing Cook, "It was actually to the point where you were considering that you couldn’t just leave them; the humane thing would be to put ’em out.’’ What do you think?
3. What shocked, or disturbed, you the most? The actions of the staff? The unpreparedness (short-sightedness?) of the hospital? The horrific conditions everyone operated under?
4. How do you think you would you have fared under the conditions at New Orleans' Memorial? As a patient? As a care provider?
5. What legal and ethical standards must doctors be expected to uphold in a disaster? Should they—or any professional—be held to the same standards that operate during normal conditions? In other words, is there a gray area in ethics when things go disastrously wrong?
6. In such situations as occurred at Memorial, who should be saved first? Who should make those decisions?
7. Why did the local grand jury decline to bring charges against Anna Pou? Do you agree with its decision? To what degree should Pou be held accountable for her actions?
8. Ultimately, who is most responsible for the tragedy at Memorial Hospital? The hospital owners? The staff? The local, state, or federal government?
9. What lessons were learned from the hospital disaster at Memorial?
Questions adapted from Lit Lovers
1. Discuss the book 5 Days at Memorial as a piece of writing. Was the story well told? Was the story fairly told? Was the story sympathetic in anyway or did the author maintain neutrality?
2. Consider your emotions as you read this book - what (if anything) elicited a strong emotional response from you?
3. What is a hero? Were there any heroes in this story? Are doctors, nurses, and police officers "heroes"?
4. What role did the media play in shaping the narrative of what happened at Memorial General Hospital?
5. How did racism contribute to the tragic events that occurred at Memorial General Hospital?
6. Did your opinions change or evolve as you read the story and learned more of the nuances of the situation?
7. What are the lessons of this story?
8. What (if anything) surprised you?
9. What parallels can you draw to Covid and the pandemic we are currently experiencing?