Pernicious authority and poor administration or just bad journalism?

‘Christian: Bow for you and your terrible accent.’

Putting to one side what so many class as the crass nature of the call, two aspects stand out. First, that the call is put through immediately to the ward. Secondly, that the ward nurse immediately gives out details of the patient’s medical condition. This raises at once the question whether the hospital had a protocol to be followed by staff when responding to telephone enquiries. In light of the immediacy of both responses, and the responses themselves, at first and second glance it may appear not.

Does this seem odd?

Everyday television viewers of soap opera, serials and series centred on hospitals or raising any matters medical, along with readers of crime or police procedurals, thrillers and their like knows that when hospitals field telephone calls from seekers of patient information, callers receive a bland response. Never, as it appears on such programmes and in the novels, is an enquirer – whoever it may be – put through without question to the patient’s ward. Never, as it seems, is medical information imparted. Always, as it appears, comes a bland response. Without crucial caller identification, the most said is ‘condition stable’ or ‘resting quietly’ or some similar form of ‘rote’ words.

Are these novels and programmes based in reality, or are they pure fiction, written without reference to what happens in the real world?

Although fiction is ‘made up’ stories, mostly accepted as tales related to no real characters, compositions involving people constructed entirely out of the writers’ imagination, unless it is science fiction viewers generally require some adherence to reality. However multifaceted in storyline, absurd the character or plot, soap opera, police procedurals, crime stories and hospital romances are expected to be anchored in some notion of what is real. The narrative, however exotic, has some authenticity, some relationship to what happens in the universe.

In any event, medical confidentiality and privacy laws have application or at least might be expected to do so in the real world. Albeit the United Kingdom has no explicit formal ‘right to privacy’, the Human Rights Act1998 (UK) incorporates the European Human Rights Convention which confirms a right for ‘everyone’ to ‘respect’ for her or his ‘private and family life’. The confidentiality of medical records is affirmed where a relevant relationship exists between the subject and the holder of that information, as is clearly so where a patient receives treatment whilst resident in a hospital. Additionally, ‘sensitive personal data’ including a person’s ‘physical or mental health or condition’ is covered by the Data Protection Act 1998 (UK) which, if seen as possibly applicable to 2DayFM (the purpose of NSW Police enquiries) some might also see as possibly applicable to the hospital?

Returning, then, to the telephone call that had such a tragic outcome, could it really be assumed there was no telephone enquiry protocol in place? More probably, the opinion that this is unlikely is correct, for otherwise a hospital may place itself in a vulnerable position in regard to all existing and prospective patients. Surely that cannot be so.

Whether or not ‘privacy’ rules, confidentiality of medical records and information must be governed by hospital protocols. Any hospital treating any patients at all, and with any patients in residence at any time, must be taken to adopt a standard form of response to telephone calls, telephone enquirers and telephone enquiries. Such a protocol would, one may suggest, be unlikely to include provisions that contemplate putting calls through without pause, or transmitting medical information without query.

What, then, is one to make of the transcript which so evidently appears to indicate otherwise?

That there was no questioning of the callers – neither initially at reception nor at the ward nurses station – must be based in some reasoning. Was it class, status and ‘authority’ – as in royalty trumps protocol?

This is, perhaps, the answer.