Anna Pou's Case Analysis

Learning from what Dr. Anna Pou had to face with the lawsuits she was dealing with makes me cringe. As Healthcare professionals, having to worry of possibly being sued for believing what is right for the patient or as a whole for the hospitals health is ridiculous. Healthcare professionals like Dr. Pou, have taken the Hippocratic oath, and one of the promises made within that oath is “first, do no harm”. Often time’s society look at courts cases as a battle versus two oppositions, but Dr. Pou’s case it is not. In her statements from national television she states saying her role was to ‘‘help’’ patients ‘‘through their pain,’’.
We will never know exactly what have had at Memorial Medical Center during Hurricane Katrina, but we know that Dr. Pou will have to carry those death’s over her shoulders until she passes. In addition, it’s clear that Dr. Pou never wants something like this to happen to any healthcare profession again. The laws she passed and wrote were very detailed and strictly directed at time of future disaster, which is reasonable because prosecutors shouldn’t be so quick to point the finger and put all the blame on one specific healthcare profession.
Dr. Pou type of law she proposed offered immunity to most civil law suits, but not cases of willful misconduct in future disasters. As well as

to encourage prosecutors to wait for the word of the medical panel to see whether or not they should prosecute who they have in mind.
Dr.

Pou didn’t stop there she joined the state and national medical organizations on disaster preparedness and legal reform. Dr. Pou even began speaking at national conferences giving lectures on the topic like medical ethics and made arguments for the standard of medical care in emergencies. She explained her reasoning on what she follows during these conferences, and justifies what had happened during the Hurricane Katrina at the Memorial Medical Center. A few later more information on the case was found, and it improved the image of Dr. Pou. In the new information, it was found that she wasn’t the only who had made the decision to give the patients

injections.
More healthcare professionals were involved and more injection were given to patients then recorded. This resulted more deaths and more people that were given injections that weren’t close to death. This is sad but I don’t think there was any way that it could have been prevented. Multiple physicians agreed to the decision and at the time of the disaster they all went along with it. If this were to happen on circumstance that there was no threat to the safety of the hospital, physician, or patient then it wouldn’t have been okay. However, the healthcare professionals made a decision and if they had not have made one there is a strong chance it could have been worse.
From all of this, it’s easy to look at the repercussions of Hurricane Katrina as a disastrous event. However, this should be a learning experience that hospitals have to be more prepared for situations like these to happen. A number of factors like how the Memorial Medical Center was built was a huge problem, the power sources were vulnerable to the hurricane and were damaged. The walls structure of the hospitals was too weak and were able to get destroyed before help arrived. The faculty of the hospital were also in need of preparation on how to deal with the situation. We have to keep this in mind and remember that healthcare professions will always have the best interest for us for our health and safety.