The problem is, no one knows what really happened. I've seen many patients who were critically ill BEGGING for pain meds, and if you give them even a normal dose, it can depress their respiratory effort enough that the next dose might just kill them.
I work for Tenet. We're in a world of **** right now, not only with the N.O. arrests, but with the $725 million Medicare fraud lawsuit we just settled in Florida. But that has NOTHING to do with my opinion about these nurse and doctors. What these hospitals and nurses did is the same thing you have to do in any mass casualty incident. You triage, decide where to expend your efforts, and sadly, some people simply are not well enough to survive, even under the best of care. It sounds cruel, but most public health policies in the U.S. outline standards of care in situations like this, and the patients that are deemed to be beyond help, you make comfortable, but you don't expend extraordinary effort on.
I talked to patients who were in that hospital, I took care of some that were evacuated from that hospital, and I worked alongside nurses that were evacuated from that hospital. One of them works with me now, and she has developed severe anxiety and actually started having a seizure disorder since she moved to Memphis. It's easy for people to sit in their desk chairs and judge from afar when they have NO CLUE what horrific conditions these nurses, doctors, and aides were dealing with. These patients didn't have food. They were running out of medicines. There was no way to run ventilators. There was no air conditioning or power after the generators blew. There were bugs, snakes, animals inside that hospital, the smell was overpowering by the second day. There was no water. Staff lived in constant fear of being attacked and killed by other people roving around just as desperate for food and water as they were, and also by looters and people trying to steal drugs. The staff was walking around with IV's in their arm just trying to stay strong enough to care for people.
The very first thing I did when I got my two evacuating patients in my ambulance leaving for Memphis was give each of them a shot of Ativan, and a shot of Dilaudid/Phenergan and hung an IV bag, because otherwise they couldn't have tolerated the 8 hour ride in a bumpy ambulance crammed into the back with me and another patient. They had been suffering for days with no food/water, and were in pain. had backups in case they wanted more, because, honestly, that was the only comfort measure I had with me. I wouldn't have given a lethal dose, but I also know that they would tolerate the transport more easily if they were sedated.
I didn't sleep for almost a week after I came home, I couldn't eat, and I didn't even go into the worst parts of N.O. But I had to see people who were so traumatized by Katrina, and what they had seen, and what they had done to survive. I don't for one minute think that I could have handled watching frail, elderly patients who were even on a good day near deaths' door suffer through that excruciating heat, no food, no water. You better believe that if they were crying out and begging for help, asking for pain meds, or something to relieve their suffering, then I would have given it in a heartbeat.
