Can you tell me 5 facts from First Do No Harm?

• First, Do No Harm is a real-life dramatization of the routine ethical dilemmas that healthcare professionals, patients and their relatives face on a day-to-day basis. The book reads like a novel, but author and New York Times writer Lisa Belkin maintains that every event in the book is true.

• The book concerns a large cast of characters, a host of doctors, nurses, aides, parents, relatives, children, babies, and hospital administrators.

• First, Do No Harm is structured chronologically over a six month period, May through October, 1988. The book has six parts with distinct characters and their unique dilemmas introduced each month. Some characters are recurring and their struggles continue throughout the entire book.

• The setting of the book is Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas.

• The committee, known as the Institutional Ethics Committee focuses primarily on the withdrawal of life support. The committee also faces the crushing question of financing patients who are unable to finance themselves. It sees itself as having a duty "to risk above any talk of dollars and cents" and instead focuses on "what is ethical and just" (17).