Authors

  1. Section Editor(s): Kennedy, Maureen Shawn MA, RN

Article Content

In late July, the Louisiana attorney general ordered the arrests of a doctor and two nurses in New Orleans, accusing them of administering a lethal combination of sedatives and painkillers to four critical care patients at Memorial Medical Center in the days following Hurricane Katrina. The deaths occurred under nightmarish conditions of heat, power loss, and flooding, in which many patients at the hospital had already died. The attorney general had not yet stated a motive, and medical ethicists quoted in the New York Times said that ethical aspecs of end-of-life decisions facing caregivers under such extreme conditions are not always clear. AJN will follow this story as it develops.