UK Royal Prank Call - Tragic Ending

The radio station is largely to blame but the hospital should also share some of it. They should have
put in place some kind of protocol for incoming phone calls , directed to any member of the Royal family.

Scotland Yard have now been called in.
 
My dad was saying how the chief executive of the hospital should take some of the blame. Here was a high profile member of the royal family staying as a patient at his hospital, and some DJs were able to get through the system with some phoney accents.
Why was a nurse in charge of the phone exchange? A professional telephone operator should have a better idea of how to deal with in coming calls. How is a nurse supposed to feel if she thinks the queen is calling about one of her family. Is she supposed to teller to go away, or somehow prove that she is the queen? She was just a nurse, who's job it is to look after people.

So I agree with my dad, that the chief executive should take the blame for his end of what happened, and bloody resign. What is he paid for anyway?
Why was a nurse on the switchboard?
 
Any laws regarding impersonating a figure of authority to gain confidential information or violating patient confidentiality do indeed come into play, but it should be limited to that. I don't necessarily think they should be held legally liable for the death. There was no mal intent. As sad as it was, it's not always productive to play the blame game. Cause and effect are often unpredictable.
 
When I called up to book an NHS hospital appointment over the phone I had to give a password and I would have thought having something like that in place would stop incidents like this.

I don't see what was so hilarious about this prank even before that poor woman killed herself. It is confidential patient information, what if Kate had a miscarriage and that information was told over the phone to some wanker DJ's thinking they were being funny.
 
I have various thoughts on it.

- The presenters could never have imagined their prank would lead to something like this.
- The prank was stupid.
- Practical jokes are often cruel and humiliating and don't come from a good place. I don't like them.
- This was the nurse who put the call through to a nurse on Kate's ward, she did not say anything about Kate at all.
- The other nurse did not give out any information that put Kate at risk or invaded her privacy.
- Why weren't the Royal Family's very expensive security team vetting calls?
- It seems unlikely the nurse killed herself just because of this, even if she believed her career was over. There must have been something going on before in her life.

I think the MOST blame lays with Kate's security who should have known reporters, journalists and others would be calling the hospital to try and get information about her. They should never have allowed this to happen, both nurses were just doing their job and didn't do anything wrong.

If you listen to the clips, neither of them seem convinced that it's the Queen. There's a lot of hesitation and pauses. If I were in their shoes, I would think "it's very weird the Queen is calling on the switchboard, but Kate's security must be taking care of this stuff so I guess it's already been checked out". Then I would have given the same sort of vague information the second nurse gave out.
 
Lord Snot said:
I have various thoughts on it.

- The presenters could never have imagined their prank would lead to something like this.
- The prank was stupid.
- Practical jokes are often cruel and humiliating and don't come from a good place. I don't like them.
- This was the nurse who put the call through to a nurse on Kate's ward, she did not say anything about Kate at all.
- The other nurse did not give out any information that put Kate at risk or invaded her privacy.
- Why weren't the Royal Family's very expensive security team vetting calls?
- It seems unlikely the nurse killed herself just because of this, even if she believed her career was over. There must have been something going on before in her life.

I think the MOST blame lays with Kate's security who should have known reporters, journalists and others would be calling the hospital to try and get information about her. They should never have allowed this to happen, both nurses were just doing their job and didn't do anything wrong.

If you listen to the clips, neither of them seem convinced that it's the Queen. There's a lot of hesitation and pauses. If I were in their shoes, I would think "it's very weird the Queen is calling on the switchboard, but Kate's security must be taking care of this stuff so I guess it's already been checked out". Then I would have given the same sort of vague information the second nurse gave out.
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You have made a perfect summary of the topic, however I disagree when you say that the nurses where both of the nurses just doing their jobs.
Surely no information concerning anybodys health should be given over the phone ? Furthermore
the Queen should not be privy to any of Kate's medical history. Only her husband should have acces to her
medical history and only in person.
I certainly do blame the hospital exective who I am certain has been taking advise from their lawyer !
 
shyvas said:
You have made a perfect summary of the topic, however I disagree when you say that the nurses where both of the nurses just doing their jobs.
Surely no information concerning anybodys health should be given over the phone ? Furthermore
the Queen should not be privy to any of Kate's medical history. Only her husband should have acces to her
medical history and only in person.
I certainly do blame the hospital exective who I am certain has been taking advise from their lawyer !
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All they said was she was sleeping, from what I heard. What is the harm of telling someone on the phone that?
 
Lord Snot said:
All they said was she was sleeping, from what I heard. What is the harm of telling someone on the phone that?
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There was more than just that information given. My point is that no information whatsover should have
been given over the phone, espcially at 5 am in the morning.
 
shyvas said:
You have made a perfect summary of the topic, however I disagree when you say that the nurses where both of the nurses just doing their jobs.
Surely no information concerning anybodys health should be given over the phone ? Furthermore
the Queen should not be privy to any of Kate's medical history. Only her husband should have acces to her
medical history and only in person.
I certainly do blame the hospital exective who I am certain has been taking advise from their lawyer !
Click to expand...
I'm an RN in the US, and we used to give out information via phone until a patient privacy bill HIPpa was passed some years ago. (We are subject to loss of nursing license and up to $100,000 fine.If a similar law is in place in England, I can more understand the suicidal nurse's despair.) Nowadays I cannot even say that someone is a patient at our hospital. I've spoken with frantic grandmothers-to-be and can't tell them their daughter is fine and in labor. Nurses answer the phones at the nurse station all the time, btw. If it is a call for the patient, we transfer it to the patient room. The unit secretaries are busy, too, so if I'm at the desk charting, I pick up the phone. When I worked pediatrics, there was no unit secretary on night shift, so the nurses and techs manned the phones.

Now if we have a celebrity patient, it is total lockdown. Jennifer Hudson gave birth here, for example, and Paris Hilton was in our ER after being thrown by a horse. Very good care was taken of their privacy, and staff taking care of them were carefully chosen. Nurses here are terrified of hippa, so we probably err on the side of caution too much sometimes.

I feel bad for the nurse answering the phone, as she probably was doing five things at once and assumed that Catherine's nurse wouldn't be an idiot. Imo.
 
It doesn't make sense to me that she would kill herself in response to a prank call in which she wasn't even the one who gave out information. I think holding the DJs responsible for her suicide is ridiculous. We can't just say "event X happened, then suicide happened, therefore suicide was caused by event X".

I do think the DJs were at fault for exposing private medical information and perhaps for airing someone's voice without their knowledge/permission, though. Perhaps moreso the station management than the DJs, since they gave the go-ahead.
 
cornsail said:
It doesn't make sense to me that she would kill herself in response to a prank call in which she wasn't even the one who gave out information. I think holding the DJs responsible for her suicide is ridiculous. We can't just say "event X happened, then suicide happened, therefore suicide was caused by event X".

I do think the DJs were at fault for exposing private medical information and perhaps for airing someone's voice without their knowledge/permission, though. Perhaps moreso the station management than the DJs, since they gave the go-ahead.
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Considering the importance of the patient, it is probable that by transferring the call into the room, she assumed she would have lost her job. My hospital would have fired both of them with the US laws as they are.

The DJs are idiots, but I have heard far worse shock jock stuff. Once I protested because a dj in Tampa was going to kill a pig in the radio station parking lot live on radio to imitate a scene on the tv show Survivor. He killed the poor thing anyway, was later fired due to public pressure, and is now back on the air.

Another dj here used to call malls and pretend he was an old guy trapped in the trunk of a hot car in the parking lot. Then he would say "oh good I found a match, I can see, oh no, a gas can", (big explosion noise, hang up.)
 
That radio station is known for doing questionable, cruel and tasteless stunts. They really need to lose their license for good.

At the time of Saldanha’s suicide, 2Day FM was serving two five-year license probations over stunts that violated Australia’s broadcast code. In August 2009, DJ Kyle Sandilands of “The Kyle and Jackie O Show” got a 14-year-old girl to admit that she had been raped after strapping her to a polygraph machine while her mother quizzed her about her sexual activities. “I’ve already told you the story about this, and don’t look at me and smile because it’s not funny,” the girl said on air. “Oh OK, I got raped when I was 12 years old.” Cruelly, Sandilands pressed on, asking, “Right, and is that the only sexual experience you had?”...

...In 1996, host David Rymer pretended to be from a school testing board and convinced a young girl that her perfect score on a major national test was a mistake, causing her to burst into tears...

...In another incident, the station told a family that they were being awarded $150,000 to care for their disabled child, but when the family attempted to claim the donation, they were instead handed a list of names of people who pledged money and in the end couldn’t collect more than $50,000...

..That’s not to mention the station’s “Heartless Hotline” shows, which exploited disadvantaged listeners by offering them prizes, but threatened to take them away if a more interesting listener wanted the loot. In one 2009 case, a mother of five children, four of them disabled, was offered tickets for the family to the Sydney Royal Easter Show, but was then told she had to argue with another caller over the tickets while the station decided whether she could keep them...
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...n-behind-the-tragic-kate-middleton-prank.html
 
^OMFG. Those are truly horrible things they did. Very cruel and heartless assholes. They should have lost their license after that first incident.
 
Blobbenstein said:
My dad was saying how the chief executive of the hospital should take some of the blame. Here was a high profile member of the royal family staying as a patient at his hospital, and some DJs were able to get through the system with some phoney accents.
Why was a nurse in charge of the phone exchange? A professional telephone operator should have a better idea of how to deal with in coming calls. How is a nurse supposed to feel if she thinks the queen is calling about one of her family. Is she supposed to teller to go away, or somehow prove that she is the queen? She was just a nurse, who's job it is to look after people.

So I agree with my dad, that the chief executive should take the blame for his end of what happened, and bloody resign. What is he paid for anyway?
Why was a nurse on the switchboard?
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I don't think the nurse was on the switchboard - she was simply answering the phone at the nurse's station where she was working. Most nurses' stations have direct numbers, as do most patient rooms for that matter, at least here in the U.S.

Unless the chief executive failed to ensure proper procedures were in place and failed to ensure that people were trained in such procedures, I don't see how this is his fault. You can train/instruct people over and over, and they won't necessarily follow procedures 100% of the time.

yakherder said:
Any laws regarding impersonating a figure of authority to gain confidential information or violating patient confidentiality do indeed come into play, but it should be limited to that. I don't necessarily think they should be held legally liable for the death.
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Agreed.

Lord Snot said:
- The presenters could never have imagined their prank would lead to something like this.
- The prank was stupid.
- Practical jokes are often cruel and humiliating and don't come from a good place. I don't like them.
- This was the nurse who put the call through to a nurse on Kate's ward, she did not say anything about Kate at all.
- The other nurse did not give out any information that put Kate at risk or invaded her privacy.
- Why weren't the Royal Family's very expensive security team vetting calls?
- It seems unlikely the nurse killed herself just because of this, even if she believed her career was over. There must have been something going on before in her life.
Click to expand...

Agreed, except for the part about Kate's security team vetting calls, unless you mean any calls about/for Kate. The security detail vetting calls generally would be an infringement of other patients' privacy.

cornsail said:
It doesn't make sense to me that she would kill herself in response to a prank call in which she wasn't even the one who gave out information.
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You don't know what else was going on. It's rare that one single event causes someone to commit suicide, but fear of losing one's job could certainly be a triggering event.

I think that the dj's and their station are both morally repugnant. And apparently they were still using references to the "prank" in their advertising, even after they learned of the suicide. Assholes.
 
I have worked as a hospital switchboard operator as a temp, for one month. I remember we were always briefed if there was something that we needed to be careful with. It is weird that this even could have happened. Someone on the switchboard must have put the calls up to the nurse, you cant just phone parts of hospital direct like that.

I feel very sad for the nurse, though I feel that there must be more to it than just this situation.

As for the DJs, they are morons, honestly if you are going to play a prank, ask yourself first "Does the prank involve a hospital or someone in a hospital" and if the answer is yes, dont do it. Prank calls to hospitals are just dumb.
 
Freesia said:
I have worked as a hospital switchboard operator as a temp, for one month. I remember we were always briefed if there was something that we needed to be careful with. It is weird that this even could have happened. Someone on the switchboard must have put the calls up to the nurse, you cant just phone parts of hospital direct like that.

I feel very sad for the nurse, though I feel that there must be more to it than just this situation.

As for the DJs, they are morons, honestly if you are going to play a prank, ask yourself first "Does the prank involve a hospital or someone in a hospital" and if the answer is yes, dont do it. Prank calls to hospitals are just dumb.
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In hospitals here in the US, you can call the nurses' station directly 24 hours a day. You don't have to go through the main switchboard. You can call directly into the patient room also between 7am-7pm, after that time we can transfer it in if the patient is awake.

Those djs sound awful! Horrible stuff!
 
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