[Olivia Arpin]

1. I do not believe it was fair. All the nurses tried their best given their circumstances of a shortage of supplies. Pou was arrested for trying their best during a time where optimal patient care was limited due to staffing, supplies, and the large number of patients to attend to.
2. It’s important that Fink included information about high profile murders and the murder rate in New Orleans because there were many murders throughout the hospitals and they have a very high homicide rate. Specifically Memorial Hospital, had a high killing rate of the patients.
3. When I attempted to open the link, it said the page was not found.
4. The historical perspectives offered impacted my view on mercy killing both negatively and positively. Mercy killing is to be done at LAST resort during a time of limited access to nursing and in specific situations. I believe that at Memorial mercy killing was done with the best intent due to patients not getting their lawful nursing, not improving, and the limits of care able to be given. The mercy killing took those patients who were incapable of getting better during a time of survival of the fittest and provided them with less suffering. Some factors that sway people from one side to the other are the decisions being made, patient conditions, and the access to supplies.
5. Doctor Pou’s attorney had such a difficult time finding useful guidelines from the AMA on comfort of care because hurricane Katrina was so large and nothing had happened like that before so it was hard to compare it to other situations. Treatment outlines respect, dignity, and the best decision for the patients though in a situation where there are so many circumstances that affect care, it’s nearly impossible to determine a rightful solution. Arthur Caplan’s opinion on what happened at Memorial Hospital was that it did not fit within the definition of palliative sedation due to rules that were put into place. The AMA decided following the hurricane that documentation of medications administered to be provided and a family consultation.

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