Politics, Current Events & Hot Button Issues

[Miss Sunshine]

Okay girls, i'm from the UK and i don't know wether this news story had reached america but here we go.....

Princess Kate recently went into hospital, what with her being pregnant she has contracted an illness where she throws up all the time, and its terrible for her. Two australian radio presenters (shock jocks), one male and one female, decided it would be funny to call up pretending to be the queen and someone else from the royal family ( i forget who) and try and discover more of kates personal treatment and illness and life in hospital, so they called and A FEMALE NURSE answered (shes important) anyway so the call was put through and they chatted with the other nurse and soon afterthe recording went through austrailin checks and was put onto the radio (this in its self i think isn't right but anyway) so of course it did cause considreble outrage.

The next morning it was discovered that the female nurse who answered the call had killed herself. She was 45 years old.

I am annoyed, maybe even outraged and i feel deeply deeply sorry for the family of the women, i can only presume this women killed herself out of pure embarrasment which is upsetting. But, whos to blame? the shock jocks doing there job? the australian guide lines for letting it through? or am i over reacting? was it just a simple prank gone wrong? and what do you feel should happen to the people who did this?

Comment below i would be really intrested to here your opinions x

[illusione]

What  happened was tragic, but I don't think the Australian radio station is to blame. Prank phone calls have been a standard practise on radio stations all over the world for decades and usually they are well recieved and harmless. While it may have been immature, it obviously wasn't intended to cause any harm 

We don't know the full story (and really there's no reason for it to be made public, the family have been through enough already) but a prank phone call like that would not usually drive somebody to suicide unless they already had other serious issues, and it would have been impossible for the DJs or the radio station to predict it. 

[flamingoccm]

Here's the thing. 

1) There are laws that prevent the nurse from sharing information about a patient, so how it wouldn't just be common sense that the flipping Queen of England wouldn't have a personal line with the Duchess is beyond me because lord knows that she's got a phone in her room. She's got severe morning sickness, not a coma.

2) Moreover, I'm not sure why anyone believes they should be entitled to personal health information about anyone else, regardless of who that patient is. It's kinda like earlier this year a Senator (I'm from the US) was admitted for treatment for a severe mental health issue...turned out to be bipolar disorder...but the nation seemed to be all up in arms that he/his people wouldn't release the location of his treatment facility, name of his doctor, the diagnosis, etc. to the public. I'm sorry, last time I checked it was none of your damn business.

So no, I don't care if their job is to shock people by pulling pranks, you are NOT under ANY circumstances entitled to that kind of information. I'm sure there's got to be some sort of crime for impersonating a world leader in here somewhere.

Whoever patched them through--because it's not like the nurse could have been contacted on her personal phone number while in the hospital because they usually use special phones--should probably get fired because they clearly missed the part where they're supposed to actually check that sh!t out because it's not like Australia and England have the same international code.

The nurse who actually killed herself could have had charges pressed against her if the Royal Family wanted to pursue it. I am sure that the people treating the Duchess had to sign confidentiality contracts on top of the usual confidentiality protocols. I'm sorry that she felt the need to resort to suicide, but I really don't get how it even happened. Even if it weren't some radio hosts and it was just some guy on the street, it's scary that it took so little for them to get such personal information about someone.

[illusione]

The nurse who commited suicide was the one who put the call through to the ward, not the one who gave out the information.

1) It's fairly standard for callers to be put through to patients by the hospital switchboard rather than being given extension numbers because patients can be moved between wards depending on their condition, and often shouldn't be disturbed by ringing phones. Every time I've called somebody in a hospital, it's been through the switchboard. 

1) The point of the call was quite clearly not to get personal information from the Hospital, but to see the reaction of the staff to their silly accents. They obviously never expected to get through, and weren't taking it all that seriously. Somebody genuinely attempting to extract information would probably have left out corgi impersonations...

It's unfortunate that there was no trained receptionist on duty at the time, and the call went through to staff who were probably already tired, busy and generally under a lot of pressure,  presumably hadn't received adequate training to know how to deal with calls; and in the case of the nurse who commited suicide, not a native English speaker. 

It shouldn't have happened, but I don't think it's anybody's fault. The hospital certainly needs to review its telephone procedures and ensure staff are trained properly, and the radio station should really have thought more carefully about whether the call was appropriate, but at the end of the day, it was just a series of unfortunate circumstances. Nobody involved meant any harm, and certiainly nobody should have died. 

[Nyctimene]

Agree with Illusione.

I find it hard to believe that she killed herself because of one embarrassing incident. Everyone gets embarrassed and since the entire basis of embarrassment is that it's a public event, everyone experienced pretty much what she did. Most people realize it's not the end of the world and move on.

I think she had some very serious problems either at home or perhaps even mentally and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back, not that she was a joyous, happy person the prior day and this one phone call reduced her into a teary, suicidal wreck.

[stayclassy]

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Nyctimene wrote:
Agree with Illusione.

I find it hard to believe that she killed herself because of one embarrassing incident. Everyone gets embarrassed and since the entire basis of embarrassment is that it's a public event, everyone experienced pretty much what she did. Most people realize it's not the end of the world and move on.

I think she had some very serious problems either at home or perhaps even mentally and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back, not that she was a joyous, happy person the prior day and this one phone call reduced her into a teary, suicidal wreck.

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This is exactly what I was going to post.

[del677]

It may have had nothing to do with the phone call. We don't know any background information on this nurse. Maybe she was severely depressed already and the phone call was just the last straw, but we're not seeing all the other straws weighing her down already. Which straw is to blame?

We feel bad because of how it turned out. What we really want is to know if we can change something to help prevent a similar incident from happening in the future. Using the "broken clock means there's a broken part we need to find and remove" metaphor, we search for the "broken part", who's to blame? If we can pin the blame on someone that makes us feel better, we found the "broken part", and we can remove that broken part, or chastise it, vent our anger on it.

But sometimes bad things happen not because of any single broken part. We don't have a concept of a broken clock that has no broken part inside. If you unjustly pin the blame on someone you may just induce another suicide.

Quite likely no one involved intended to commit murder. I'm surprised if she's a nurse who worked at a hospital where they treat clinical depression and mental illness patients, she didn't know about resources available to help her. Though then again I often see hospital employees outside our hospital smoking cigarettes, which seems quite ironic to me, you'd think they of all people would know better.

To prevent a similar thing from happening in the future, I'd look into setting up support networks, connection circles, resources people can turn to long before they reach the stage where one more straw can break them.

Then again, we have a system in our town that's set up to help desperately suicidal people. The problem is they won't help you if you call them before you get that desperate. They're only a "crisis intervention" program, but when I called them they essentially said, "Are you standing on the edge of a bridge?" and I said no I wasn't that bad yet but I was bad and seeking help, they said they couldn't help me, call back when I'm standing on the edge of a bridge.

[stayclassy]

That's awful. How do they know people will even call when they are at that stage.... I would think if they are standing on a bridge, they are more likely to have made up their mind already. And how do you know the last straw is to stand on a bridge, what if it's to take down a bunch of people along with themselves.

What if someone calls them like you did and they give attitude like that, and they feel even more uncared for and alone, what will make them call them back when they are standing on a bridge.

[pipsty]

Personally I think it was a prank gone wrong. Ringing and impersonating the queen is disgusting in itself but if no-one had commited suicide then it would've blown over...Unfortunatly it pushed the nurse over the edge. In fairness to the nurse, who would dare doubt the queen? Surely the nurse would've had depression or something to make her be pushed to end her life over a mistake.

I do blame whoever thought that impersonating the queen was a good idea, but I genuinly think that it was a bad prank gone even worse x 

[Nyctimene]

They found out recently that the Nurse had a history of suicide attempts and has attempted suicide at least twice before in the last couple years. This was her third (at least) known attempt, not her first as it first seemed/was reported.