A thread I started on this topic has been closed and I respectfully reques, given the circumstances as discussed in the Mirror article
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kate-middleton-prank-call-nurse-148...
and the demands of the family and their spokesman for answers, it be allowed to continue. This is not a case of revelling in all the gory details
http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/who-killed-nurse...
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The family’s spokesman, Labour MP Keith Vaz, said they were demanding answers from the hospital about the circumstances that led to her death.
Bosses at the hospital in Marylebone have said they will conduct internal inquiries, but Mr Vaz said the nurse’s family – including husband Ben, and children Junal, 17, and Lisha, 14 – “want to know everything”.
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The husband of royal hoax nurse Jacintha Saldanha had to call the hospital where she worked to find out about her death, a friend said yesterday.
Ben Barboza phoned up after Jacintha, who is thought to have hanged herself, failed to return to their home in Bristol on Friday.
Ivan D’Souza, 47, who lives next door to Jacintha’s family in Mangalore, India, said she was about two hours late when Ben called the King Edward VII Hospital in London.
Mr D’Souza claims it was at this point he discovered Jacintha, 46, had killed herself in her nurse’s flat near the hospital.
The Mirror has already revealed how Ben had not heard from his wife since Tuesday – when the prank call took place.
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The family are also demanding to know how long hospital management knew she was dead after paramedics found her at around 9.30am.
The nurse was unconscious but still alive when ambulance crews arrived but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
A postmortem was held on Tuesday but the results are not yet known while an inquest is due to be opened and adjourned today.
The hospital was unavailable for comment.
I am inclinded to believe the hospital when it said no action was taken to discipline the two nurses involved however given what I know about working in a enviroment with lots of coworkers, the amount of teasing and jokes she would have gotten from coworkers could have pushed her over the brink
The hospital staff are expected to deal with the pressure of caring for high-profile patients on a regular basis. They need good, ongoing training to deal with the media. Most importantly, they should get ongoing support and encouragement for their role in the media circus that is part of their jobs. Beyond just no discipline, I would look to the hospital and other organizations to spend a bit of time giving their staff positive feedback whenever possible. If she did the right things but it still turned out badly, then tell her that they understand. Tell her that they know she was in a very tough situation and she did what she could. Tell her they support her. Ask her if they can do more to help with similar situations in future. It seems like a little thing but it can go so far.
It's fair to ask if they know for sure that she actually hanged HERSELF-that seems a fairly extreme overreaction to what ended up being an essentially harmless mistake.
Given what I know about employers, it is inconceivable that the hospital didn't swiftly launch an internal investigation and haul the nurses in for interviews about what happened, why they revealed confidential patient information over the phone (no matter who they thought was on the phone), etc. - besides whatever teasing and jokes they had to endure. The fact that no disciplinary action was taken may simply be a matter of how quickly events deteriorated.
I also find their statement unusual. Why wouldn't they take disciplinary action - even if it was just a reprimand?
Wow. You guys just can't get enough of this dissection of what is clearly a personal tragedy. Fine then. Knock yourselves out.
A few years back I had two members of my immediate family commit suicide, within a few months of each other. If I'd heard this kind of clinical discussion of their deaths from someone I would've been mighty tempted to kick the crap out of them. But that's just me.
Catchfire can moderate this thread, if he so chooses. I certainly don't need the triggers, and I'm sure you don't need me here going on about what's appropriate. Enjoy every lurid detail.
Maybe they recognize the enormous pressure staff would face over a Royal being at the hospital? It would be no surprise if the hospital was sensitive to those pressures given that the royals use that hospital regularly or that they trained/lectured/warned staff about media tricks
A moderator closed the thread and you decided to make a new one?
I think there is no need for this to be discussed here.
I'd appreciate a clearer explanation of why this issue, which is being discussed everywhere in the media, should be out of bounds for discussion here. I thought this other discussion was important:
http://rabble.ca/babble/alberta-and-british-columbia/amanda-todd
I understand the need to be sensitive with regard to babblers (like Rebecca, and Unionist) who have experienced suicide of close friends or relatives.
What benefit is this discussion? Seems like rumor, innuendo and speculation to me.
Amanda Todd was ceaselessly bullied over a period of time, and the discussion was an important one, sensitively handled, as the issue of teen suicide and bullying is ongoing and important. In the case of this unfortunate nurse, her death is being callously exploited by the media, with its alleged tie-in with the nauseatingly ceaseless blah blah blah about the royal offspring-to-be.
The decision to end one's life is a process - you don't just wake up one morning and, out of the blue, decide to kill yourself. The death is sometimes preceded by years of depression, anxiety, fighting an uphill battle. To have this woman's personal tragedy dissected, with the occasional hint of some kind of hospital coverup is, in my opinion, callous. At the very least. To have such an event trotted out for public consumption must be hell on the family. It's shameful.
One of my best friends suicide was mercifully kept out of the press last month. I cant imagine what it would have been like had it been a press crush because he got the helium for the suicide from Walmart
I'm sorry about your friend. No doubt if the media could find an angle to exploit, they would. I'm glad they didn't.
I have no objection to a discussion about suicide, even Jacintha Saldanha'a death, but if it weren't for the royal connection her death would be just another statistic to all but those who loved her.
If we're to have a discussion at all, let's leave out the exploitive tabloid garbage, the endless (no doubt highly entertaining for some) speculation about the "real" reason she died.
I just hope her family holds it together. Serial suicides in families aren't uncommon, even without a grueling, potentially humiliating media circus.
Yeah I fear for some of his family actually. His mom (who found him had already buried her husband and her daughter) and his brother are both very shakey emtionally and it would not be surprising.
I hope they have a good support system. That makes a huge difference.
Well yeah I think they do, assuming it lasts a while
Plus the mom loves my little one who tired to make her smile at the funeral
Yes.
My coworkers are mostly nurses, who were initially outraged by what first appeared to be the tragic consequence of a cruel prank. But when all the details emerged, it now seems rather clear that the motivation was more likely something personal, possibly years in the making. So yeah; all the media speculation is prurient and exploitative.
The short answer is: When the family of a woman who worked at a hospital apparently killed herself, and her family wants answers as to the possible involvement of the employer hospital , we should support their demands. W should not assume that she was some damaged personality who would kill herself for any minor reason. and assume that the employer had no part in her death.
One reason to support the demands for answers as to the possible involvement of the employer hosptial is the point made by Unionist
I am quite willing to believe that IF, note IF, nurse Jacintha Sodanha had shown up for work for the 2 or 3 days between the call being broadcast and her death, her co-workers joked and teased with her, possibly, possibly saying they thought the whole thing quite amusing and she should not worry about it. I doubt very much the employer hospital, with it spatron the Queen of England, told her they thought it a joke and not to worry about it.
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the hospital treating the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge says it "deeply regrets" giving information about her to hoax callers from a radio station.
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The hospital said confidentiality was taken seriously and telephone protocols are under review.
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A hospital spokesman said: "This call was transferred through to a ward and a short conversation was held with one of the nursing staff. King Edward VII's Hospital deeply regrets this incident."
This is embarrassing for the Edward VII hospital which up until now has been favoured by the royals when seeking medical treatment - and an unnecessary distraction for Prince William
The hospital has apologised and insisted it takes patient confidentiality extremely seriously.
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I think the questions I raised in the original thread were valid and are still valid
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I had the same reaction as some others:
People dont kill themselves over being the butt of a prank- even an unbelievably publicly embarrasing one.
So it aint rocket science: you take that and stir it in with an already pathetically sick media circus of the royal fetus, and people want to talk about "what really happened".
????
Even if the family understandably wants some answers- dont even inadvertently help feed the sick circus. It can only lead to more pain for the family.
Peter, I think you can see at least some of the reasons why some babblers would object to the way this discussion was framed. I think we can talk about this story, and I think there's valuable discussion to be had, but perhaps you'd like to try framing it differently. A humble suggestion for where to start might be a less sensationalistic thread title.
At any rate, if this discussion is to continue, I would ask that someone start a thread elsewhere.
ETA. Is this thread showing up in Active Topics for everyone else? It's not visible for me.
Weird. I'm not seeing it in active topics either.
ETA: Just showed up. Huh.
it just showed up in my Active Topics, much to my chagrin.
Ongoing site issues with caching, I'm told.
More than fair. It may help for people to understand that my interest in this topic flows from involvement in workers compensation. The closest I could come to a less "sensational" new thread title would be something like: Occupational stress factors in the suicide of Jacintha Saklanha? but I am happy to leave it up to the moderators to pick a title they consider appropriate
There is a lot of literature on how certain factors and certain occupations such as nursing can lead through chronic or acute stress to suicide, In this case we are dealing with a female nurse, relatively recent immigrated from India, working night shift at a hospital tending the UKs wounded vets and the royal family. Apparently she only saw her husband and children, living in Bristol, in her free time, spending her days off at a nursing residence linked to the hospital in London. All these occupational factors are chronic moderate to high stress.
Then we are dealing with a short period of acute stress related to work that could have triggered suicide. The radio station publicly claimed afterwards they never expected the call would be let through- nobody would believe the fake accent of the Queen, the sound of "corgis" barking in the background etc. However it seems the regular switchboard operator at the hospital whose job would be to screen such a fake call was temporarily away from her position at 5:30 a.m. London time when the Australian radio station called and nurse Jacintha stepped in for the absent operator and essentially inappropriately possibly subjecting her to consequences "cleared" the release of confidential medical information from another nurse at the hospital.. It should be noted the station claims,after reviewing the pre-recorded material with its management, it made several attempts to reach the hospital to discuss releasing the material but the hospital did not answer the calls.
As discussed by a psychology prof in - Causes of suicide not always straightforward By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/13/health/nurse-uk-suicide/index.html
We know that apart from any personal embarrassment or shame Jacintha might have experienced afterward, thinking she had let her country down and her fears of consequences her employer was embarrrassed, irritated and annoyed and conducting, probably at high priority and speed, an internal review of telephone protocol. Much of that high priority high speed internal review would likely involve the actions of the switchboard operator being away from her position, Jancintha stepping in and possibly inappropriately, subjecting her to consequences, "clearing" the call and Jacintha coworker, after the call was "cleared" by Jacintha revealing confidential medical information that was spread throughout the UK and the world to the embarrassment of the royal family and the embarrassment and irritation of the employer..
I fail to see how this post is significantly different from your previous ones. You're still quoting the mainstream tabloid press, you're still speculating along the same lines as the mainstream media. I do, however, think that your point about job stress is valid. Burnout is common among health care workers. However, we simply don't have enough information, nor will we ever. No one knows what goes on in the mind of a successful suicide except the individual, and they're in no position to enlighten us.
Australian DJ Mel Greig emotionally apologises for royal prank
In a statement to the inquest into the nurse's death, a weeping Ms Greig placed the blame directly on the radio station, and a commercial radio culture of humiliation.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/australian-dj-mel-greig-emotionally-apologis...