“Leave no living patients behind” instruction

The “Leave no living patients behind” instruction is an alleged directive attributed to Susan Mulderick during the crisis at Memorial Medical Center. Its significance lies in the uncertainty around what it required: the evidence gives Frank Minyard’s reaction to the phrase, but does not establish its precise meaning or how it was put into practice.

Wording and Attribution

Minyard encountered the phrase as evidence in the case and understood it to be Mulderick’s alleged directive. He did not know what it meant. The words therefore function in his account less as a clarified operational rule than as an unresolved statement whose possible implications troubled him.

Minyard’s Ethical Boundary

Asked what he would have done in comparable hospital conditions, Minyard said he would have tried to do what he thought best for each person, with sick people taking priority over those who were not sick. He drew a sharp distinction between making such choices and deliberately administering drugs to kill nine patients who could not be removed from the seventh floor if the hospital were closing. He said he would not have done that, while also clarifying that this was not an assertion that Anna Pou had done it.

Limits of the Evidence

Minyard had heard that other doctors at Memorial had allegedly acted similarly, but he did not investigate those additional claims. His account thus records both the seriousness of the allegation and the limits of what he pursued. It does not resolve whether the phrase instructed staff to hasten patients’ deaths, nor does it establish that such an instruction was carried out.