Duchess Kate Middleton

Saturday Morning News Roundup

I was deeply, deeply saddened to hear about a stupid, vicious prank in which some Australian radio personalities called the hospital in which Duchess Kate Middleton was admitted as a patient. These DJs pretended to be the Queen of England. A nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, answered the phone and gave privileged information about the Duchess to these two morons. Yesterday, it appears that Jacintha Saldanha, mother of two and a nurse at this hospital for at least four years, committed suicide. The blame for this tragic act lies with the hospital administration. I’m not sure how it works in England, but I know that here in the United States, since 2000, patient information is treated like state secrets. I know in my hospital, we have a in-service training on patient privacy every year. Hospital fines and individual fines are steep ($1.7 million fine in Alaska) . Releasing privileged information is serious business. I suspect the same type of laws and rules exist in England. It is up to the hospital administration to teach its employees how to handle sensitive information. Most importantly, hospitals must have protocols about how to treat VIPs. This is one of the areas in which this hospital failed. Once a VIP is actually admitted to the hospital, like the Duchess, the hospital should have a command center where all information is filtered, screened and then parceled out to the press. The information should be distributed hospital-wide. Everybody should know what to do with calls that come in from the outside regarding a VIP. Unfortunately, this nurse’s career was basically over. She become world-famous, at least in medical circles, for a huge mistake. The hospital’s final failure was not realizing the seriousness of this problem in protecting this nurse from the media and herself. The fault for this terrible situation lies with the hospital. What a colossal tragedy. (more…)