On October 5, 1987, Joan Hayes, 53, a woman from West Islip, New York, was a patient at Good Samaritan Hospital when her condition suddenly turned into a fight for breath. She had been hospitalized with serious health problems, including kidney trouble described in later accounts of the case, and she was in the kind of setting where alarms and IV lines fade into the background noise of routine care. Then, without warning, she slipped into respiratory arrest. Staff rushed in, a code was called, a
...Read More
Account
