Friday 17 April 2009

Misconduct?


Margaret Haywood a nurse for more than 20 years was struck off this week for blowing the whistle on appalling conditions in the hospital she worked in. So, who is being bad here? Margaret admitted breeching patient confidentiality due to secretly filming the treatment of patients. Yet, she did get all of the patients permission for the footage to be shown. She felt this was the only way to highlight the conditions inside the Royal Sussex hospital as many previous complaints had no effect. Elderly people were shown to be left for hours when needing to go to the bathroom, one woman died painfully as she had not been given the morphine on time. Had Margaret not gone undercover for the BBC programme then would the conditions in the hospital have changed? I don't think they would of, she did a great thing by exposing this treatment and has no doubt saved a lot of patients from future mistreatment and unneccesary suffering. I feel sorry for here that she has been struck off from the job she obviously loved and took pride in. At least she could leave the hearing with her head held high, I say good on her, but one bad thing that will most definitely come out of this is that it will stop people 'whistle blowing' in the future in any profession as people will fear reprisal.

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