Sentinel Event Behind Bars
Jules M. Seletz, M.D.

THE BOOK

Sentinel Event Behind Bars is the sixth in a series of fictional medical thriller novels that deal with untoward incidents, mishaps and catastrophic outcomes known as sentinel events, that in reality turn out to be nefarious deeds perpetrated by people from different walks of life.

The first novel in the series, Sentinel Event, introduced Jacob M. Stein, MD, a resident of New Hampshire, who is a physician surveyor for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations—JCAHO. He was asked to investigate a sentinel event—an operating-room death in a small, rural hospital in North Carolina.

In Sentinel Event Behind Bars, a Correctional Officer—prison guard—dies in the medical facility of a state penitentiary. Doctor Jacob Stein is once again asked to investigate the incident for JCAHO.

Jake learns the guard was actually murdered and while trapped behind high concrete walls during a tropical hurricane he uncovers other irregularities. Even after the hurricane has abated, prison authorities further prevent his departure. A sympathetic guard notifies Jake's wife, Rhoda, and JCAHO. When Jake's wife learns of his predicament, she takes a flight to North Carolina. Meanwhile, JCAHO notifies the Attorney General at the Department of Justice, who involves the Federal Bureau of Prisons—BOP.

Unfortunately, Jake is then taken hostage during a prison riot. Fortunately, he saves an inmate's life who then protects Jake from further harm during the inmate rebellion. After the uprising is brought to a successful closure, when Jake is about to reveal all, Rhoda's life is threatened to prevent his exposing the perpetrators.

In an effort to find Rhoda, Jake is also taken prisoner. But in an unexpected turn of events, both are rescued at the eleventh hour in climactic fashion.

DEDICATION

Having recently completed six years as a physician surveyor for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations—JCAHO—I have had the opportunity and the pleasure of working with numerous other members of the surveyor corps during between 150 and 200 surveys. These men and women, most in their third or fourth careers allied to the Healthcare Industry, are a hard-working, dedicated, under-appreciated group of the work force.

After driving hundreds of miles, lugging heavy suitcases and 45 pounds of computer equipment through airports where they are forced to sit and people-watch for many hours, they live in a motel room for as long as a week at a time—at times for as long as three weeks. They arrive at the organization to be surveyed long before, and remain long after, the usual eight-hour workday, to usually face extremely nervous hospital staff, and many times confronted by senior leaders, somewhat less than receptive to their presence. The surveyors remain calm, collegial, supportive, consultative and educational. Returning to the motel room after dark, they scarf down a hurried dinner—many times just a sandwich—and spend a few evening hours in-putting data into their laptop computer.

To this group of devoted individuals, I dedicate my entire Sentinel Event series of purely fictional novels in which I could easily have used any one of these colleagues as a model for the protagonist.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author offers his extreme gratitude to Trudy Stockton,
Library Aide at the Lincoln Public Library
in Lincoln, New Hampshire,
for her most generous contribution--voluminous hours
of meticulously proofreading the entire manuscript,
line by line and word by word.

THE AUTHOR

Jules M. Seletz graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1953 as a second lieutenant, and the Chicago Medical School in 1958 with an MD. Following five years of post-graduate training at the Boston City Hospital, he practiced as a General and Peripheral Vascular Surgeon for 35 years.

He enjoyed a 41-year military career in the United States Army, with a 15-year civilian break in service, rising to the rank of full colonel, after starting out as a second lieutenant in 1953 in the field artillery during the Korean conflict. He deployed in 1985 as a military surgeon to Morocco in North Africa, in 1987 to West Germany, in 1989 to Botswana in Sub-Sahara Africa and finally, in 1991, to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in Southwest Asia during Desert Storm. Retired from the Army in 1994 while stationed at West Point, Dr. Seletz served for the next seven years as a physician surveyor for JCAHO—the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

JCAHO is the nationally and internationally accepted accrediting body for the healthcare industry. During those seven years, Dr. Seletz had several occasions to survey hospitals that have experienced untoward incidents, mishaps and catastrophic outcomes known as sentinel events.

Dr. Seletz is a part-time resident of Marblehead, Massachusetts, but lives and writes in Lincoln, New Hampshire, in the heart of the White Mountains where he enjoys skiing and mountain hiking with his wife of Acadian heritage. Together, they have seven children and twelve grandchildren. In addition to Sentinel Event Behind Bars he has also written five other mystery/medical thriller novels that involve sentinel events: Sentinel Event; Not Another Sentinel Event; Code Pink, A Sentinel Event; West Point's Sentinel Event and Sentinel Event on the High Seas. He is also the author of a Quartet of historical fiction, Pass In Review, that mirrors his own life during the twentieth century that begins with his father's emigration from Russia at the turn of the last century and ends with the publication of his novels at the beginning of this century. Pass In Review includes Book One, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Book Two, Jacob's Ladder; Book Three, Jacob's Travels; and Book Four, Jacob's Novels. Pulp, Potatoes, and Ployes is a novel he wrote depicting an Acadian Odyssey and the formation of his wife's birthplace, Fort Kent, Maine,

When residents of Lincoln, New Hampshire, learned that Dr. Seletz had written a novel that describes the establishment of Fort Kent, Maine, in Pulp, Potatoes, and Ployes, they asked, "Why not one about the creation of Lincoln, New Hampshire?" Early into researching the history of the area, he discovered the formation of this mill town back in 1892 when railroad logging was widely used to be utterly fascinating. So another book of historical fiction describing this with a background of United States history, was born, entitled Lincoln Logs.

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