In my job you check who you are speaking to and I would expect to be disciplined if I had not done so. You cannot give out confidential information to just anyone who calls up. This doesn't mean that you can't give information to relatives, you just check they are who they say they are first.
If you don't think it's funny then don't listen in, that's fine. A DJ who isn't popular isn't going to keep their job.
My mum is a nurse in the CCU (ICU) at Torbay hospital, and it is incredibly difficult for them to strike a balance between patient care and looking after the worried relatives as you said Saracen. But another thing to take into consideration with the nurses actions is that the call happened in the early hours of the morning, so she would have been on a night shift (possibly the end of a string of night shifts) and their judgement when it comes to that sort of thing becomes pretty clouded, ie its far too easy to make the wrong call on something. And that is before you take into account all the stresses and strains placed on nurses. My mum has had a lot of her time wasted by prank callers to the ICU, and this is absolutely not acceptable given the condition of patients in that department (well, its not acceptable in any hospital department, but here that time can mean the difference between someone living or dying).
I do think that prank calls to hospitals should be treated with the same severity as a prank call to 999, regardless of whether they're in the UK or abroad.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (16-12-2012)
I take it that you think 'diversity' is the same as taking the middle road and being careful not to offend anyone. Diversity is not about being bland and appealing to the lowest common denominator, it's about offering lots of different things that some people may hate and some people may love and giving people a free choice.Originally Posted by santa claus
If you don't like something that's fine, but don't assume that something you don't like isn't liked by others.
That is much easier said than done in a hospital environment with relatives of very sick patients
I really don't see why? You just take some details when the patient is admitted and stick to that. It certainly doesn't seem very difficult when the patient in question is perfectly awake and compos mentis.
How, exactly, do you check on relatives being who they say they are?
In many jobs, it'll be fairly easy. One way would be a callback. Another would be, perhaps, employee (or authorised access) information like an ID number.
But do you imagine that is foolproof?
Do you have any idea of how often the press blags their way to information, by pretending to be someone they aren't? And some of them, when they do it, have the benefit of advanced knowledge of internal systems, and the kind of information that will be requested to "verify" the caller's ID, because they've been advised by, perhaps, an ex-employee on how the person answering the phone will react and what information they'll expect.
So, you get some kind of investigator, an unauthorised person, rings you, armed with knowledge of department structures, job titles, manager's names, form numbers, and so on, and asks for information that a genuine person from that department, or source, would have, and you give it out. They may well even seed the field a bit by giving out information first. It's a psychological trick to engender confidence. And some of these people are very good at it, because they've been doing it for years.
Then, because it turns out it was a journalist lying through their teeth, you get fired for handing it out. And perhaps, because you've been fired in this way, you can't get another job, or at least, not one with anything like the same responsibility because you breached the trust once. How happy are you? And if it turns out that it was all a prank, a joke, and that's why you lost you job, and perhaps, your career, how funny is that joke?
Perhaps the "investigator" even rang you on an internal extension, perhaps by visiting someone else on tour building, and popping out for a loo break, and ducking into an empty office for a couple of minutes on the way? Perhaps it's another employee, but they give a false name and ID, one that's genuine but not their own, because they're getting a backhand payment.
Unless you work in a very secure environment, it's only possible to conduct a limited set of checks before taking the identity at face value, or any form of communication between employees grinds to a halt.
And when the relative may well be completely unknown to you, just how do you do that? Both my parents died of cancer a few years back, and at the time, my brother was working in the US. He rang periodically, identified himself by name, and asked how they were. Just how are nurses in a hospice supposed to verify his identity? And he does have a very high security clearance, and was working in a very high security context. Yet, as a voice on a phone from a different country, how was he supposed to verify he was a relative? Are nurses supposed to do a positive vet on everyone that calls? If so, no relative is going to get told diddly, ever.
So how does a nurse verify a supposed relative actually is a relative, short of a very drawn-out process? And, after all, their job is nursing, and they aren't a bureaucrat or a office worker.
csgohan4 (16-12-2012),strike-down (16-12-2012)
Great in theory, but not necessarily practical. Someone coming in by ambulance may be unconscious, or if they are conscious giving details about people they know etc will be the last thing on their minds and would get in the way of emergency treatment. And in that time you'd have had relatives trying to phone anyway.
And that's only one issue with it. There are numerous others. If this sort of identification was feasible, I think the NHS would have implemented it by now.
If Torbay is anything remotely like Sheffield North's CICU, all I can say is utter, absolute respect for a phenomenal, wonderful bunch of people doing a very hard and stressful job with a fantastic blend of absolute professionalism and considerate humanity, being able to care for the very seriously ill, sometimes lose them, and still not only be able to keep a smile on their face (at least in front of relatives) but to treat relatives, who often don't make the job of caring for the ill any easier, with tact, consideration and compassion.
I can't praise Sheffield North's CICU team any higher. Out of 100, they score about a million, each and every one, from the consultant surgeon and the anaesthetist, to the greenest of trainee nurses (well, training in ICU, anyway).
And yes, I did make sure the staff there knew how we all felt. Feel free, strike-down, to pass these comments to your Mum. Respect, ma'am. Absolute respect.
One of the reasons I feel so strongly about the idiots behind this prank is that the nurse that killed herself, apparently as a result of this (though we don't really know) is one of that same caring category of angels and the notion of any of them being treated in this way by idiot pranksters, whatever their motivation, makes my blood absolutely boil, as does the devastation wreaked on her kids by this.
strike-down (16-12-2012)
They aren't always compos mentis. My relative was admitted to one hospital after collapsing. When a scan showed the problem was a split aorta, they rushed my relative to Sheffield, blue lights and sirens all the way, and within less than a couple of hours of arrival, surgery was underway. A list of relatives that might ring was not, shall we say, a priority. And, over the next three weeks, they spend at best a few hours conscious, and even that, well doped up and half out of it.
Besides, how do you know that when someone rings and says "My name is Gertrude Bloggs, you've got my mum (or dad, daughter, son, brother, sister) in there, Freda (or Fred) Bloggs, how are they doing" that it actually is Gertrude Bloggs on the phone?
I mean, you've got the list from the patient, and Gertrude is on it, as an authorised relative. How do you check it's Gertrude ringing, not some moron claiming to be Gertrude?
And as consideration for worried relatives is the issue, when they say it's Doris Bloggs, Gertude's sister, are you supposed to deny to even knowing Fred is there, because someone forgot to put poor, frantic, worried Doris on the list?
Or, because Gertrude and Doris don't get along, Gertrude deliberately left Doris off the list, never mind that Doris is sick with worry about her Dad (or whatever).
And all because some no-brain muppet from a radio station might be making a prank call?
It's reasonably foolproof, but where it isn't at least you can show that you followed proper procedure and thus you can hardly be blamed if you did it by the book.
I mean I can see how thing could be tricky in an emergency situation where the patient is not awake or able to talk and doesn't have any relatives with them. But in this case, or in a cancer case or the vast majority of cases I can't see that there is any major difficulty. When they come in you ask them to fill out contact details and you stick to those.
Thanks, I will doMy mum (originally from the Sheffield area) did a lot of her training there (a long time ago now) and she often spoke highly of the ICU there. Torbay's CCU is a very tight-knit unit that I would imagine is at least on a par with Sheffield's from what I've seen.
It is quite sad really that a lot people who haven't been a seriously ill patient or aren't members of a family that has someone in the medical profession don't understand all the mechanics of what goes on inside a hospital. Its not just robotic care as you pointed out, its emotional care that they provide as well. And as a result, it can have an impact on a nurses emotions in ways that you just cannot predict.
People can curse the NHS for being incompetent, inefficient etc all they like, but from where I stand it does a bloody good job.
As you said earlier, a callback is a perfectly good way, or just if they are calling from an approved contact number in the first place.
No not because it might be a prankster, but because it might be that they actually don't want Doris to know, if they don't want Doris to know and she has no legal right to know then it's not your problem. If you suspect it's just because they were forgotten then you suggest that Doris phones Gertrude to ask, or check with Gertrude yourself (or the patient if they are awake).
TBH the prankster is the least of your worries, families tend to get much more upset over unwelcome relatives, or their boss or journalists, or other busybodies.
it's more what i was told from people in that business than a personal opinion. i don't like it either, but the people in charge do anything to maximise audience, and that's what seems to work. just look in the charts, most of the music is crap. "good" doesn't always mean success
personally, i want to listen to music, and if i want peoples opinions of it i'd rather have it in written form so i can read it whilst listening, but it seems that people don't quite "listen" to radio but have it as something in the background whilst they get read for work, commute or whilst working
The workload, certainly in nature and quite possibly in intensity would, I expect, vary from ward to ward. My recent experience is, as I said, with cardiac intensive care. That, as you might expect, is highly intensive, with patients in what can only be described as a very critical situation. As I understand it, an ICU stay is generally of the order of a few days, maybe a week. Largely, patients either improve, and are moved to a less intensive ward, or, well, don't. But CICU care, at least at Sheffield and I assume it's much the same elsewhere, is one-on-one nursing,one patient, one nurse, 24/7.
Of course, occasionally, a nurse is called away and another nurse may tend his/her own patient, and keep a watching brief on another, for a few minutes. But by and large, there's something going on all the time. It might be watching heart rate, dealing with arrhythmia, keeping a close eye on atrial fibrilation, changing a drip bag, or replenishing dialysis fluid or emptying a bag, or checking dressings, adjusting computerised drug pumps, or just making the patient comfortable. It's astonishing how many things have to be done, And that's not even allowing for updating everyone from a surgeon to a dietician, a physiotherapist to a microbiologist, when they visit.
Just watching these nurses do their thing made me feel worn out.
And while that's a nurse with a patient with very intensive needs for care (hence the name, I guess), it's ONE patient. Most nurses will have less demanding patients, but far more of them, at any given point.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that nurses aren't sitting around all day looking for things to do. They are, all too often, rushed of their feet trying to cope with the day to day demands of necessary admin, and of course, caring for patients.
As soon as you get into "filling out contact details", you open a can of worms. First, every time a relative rings in, a nurse has to locate those details and check. But what about patients that forget a relative? Or aren't capable of giving details in their condition? What about the relatives, like my brother calling in about his dying parents, from abroad?
Then there's the logistics. My wife had cancer surgery recently. After one op, she was in for 6 days, and spend that in four different wards. In an ideal world, you'd go in, be allocated a bed/room, and go from there to theatre, and then back to that same spot, where you stay until discharge. In the real world, at least NHS style, it simply doesn't happen like that. You might be supposed to be on a general surgery unit, but you'll actually be where they have a bed, like a renal unit. Then a more urgent renal case comes in, so you end up in a liver unit, because they have a bed tonight. Then, maybe a bed opens up in a surgical ward where you should be, so you get moved there. So, as I said, the wife was in four different wards, in six days.
So do the relatives contact details chase her round the hospital? You just know that's going to go wrong. And as soon as it does, you're going to get a relative, a real one not an idiot pretending to be one, denied any status on their loved one, and I'm sure you can imagine just how upsetting that could be it it were, for example, your mother or father you were inquiring about .... let alone your child.
And these very busy people whose priority is caring for patients, really don't have time to be chasing all over the place trying to work out who's on the authorised list and who isn't. If they spend long doing that, patient care will suffer, and rather than that, they'll end up just refusing to answer questions, and that will be very upsetting for distressed relatives.
Once again, we're not talking about any old business or organisation, or about information that is top secret or, in the vast majority of cases, of any interest whatsoever to any but relatives. The world's media aren't going to be terribly interested, for instance, in whether my relative had a good night, is still experiencing AF, or whether their still on a ventilator or if their kidney function has recovered from post-operative shock and still needs dialysis. But a 2-minute status report once or twice a day meant the world to the wife and myself.
As I say, it's a hospital. Nurses are really there to care for sick people, not hold relatives hands. But simple human compassion means they do their best to comfort, and inform, relatives. Until, of course, a couple of thoughtless, self-interested idiots think that abusing that for the sake of a brief and supposedly amusing radio clip is acceptable.
I gather these two idiots are upset at the death of this nurse, and the notion (probably correctly) that their actions were at least a direct contribution to that outcome, if not the sole cause (and we don't know). Well, good, They ought to be upset. But what upsets me is not just the effect on this poor nurse, but that these numpties ever thought pranking a hospital, a hospital for flip's sake, was a good idea in the first place. I can only assume that they are lucky enough to have never had a loved one seriously ill in hospital, and so perhaps don't really get it. If they have, and yet did this anyway, then they really are scum.
csgohan4 (17-12-2012)
When instructing others not to make assumptions, it's possibly best not to make your own eh?Strewth, give a dog a bone.
Like I said, in my opinion, most radio is tripe.
Now because of those idiots, alot of relatives will now simply be told due to confidentiality, they are unable to know about their relatives sick condition. How thoughtful...
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