Tuesday 28 April 2009

What Margaret Did


Margaret Haywood is 58 and had been a nurse for over twenty years - right until 16 April 2009, when the British Nurcery and Midwifery council struck her off from the nursing register over a charge of misconduct. Her crime? She had chosen to do right instead of going by the rules.

Every day, she was witness to how the elderly patients of the ward were treated. She saw they were left in pain, left lying for hours in their own urine, and, in many cases, left to die alone, unattended and unnoticed. The nurses didn't care to fulfill even basic duties like changing catheters on time, and the hospital management didn't care to discipline them. The numerous complaints from patients' relatives remained without consequence.

So, when a member of the BBC Panorama team asked Margaret Haywood for her support in exposing the conditions at the Royal Sussex Hospital, she agreed. She filmed - secretly - the staff's treatment and neglect of patients, and thus made an ongoing injustice known.

The Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust admitted to "institutional cruelty" and issued a lengthy apology. It was clear that someone had to be punished for what had happened.

But not the nurses guilty of the filmed occurences, nor the hospital management that let them pass unsanctioned. Nor, God forbid, the hospital director. The only one punished was Margaret Haywood herself. The only one found guilty of disrespecting the standards of her profession was the whistleblower.

This is, of course, perversely logical. What the Nurcery Council obviously expected from her was to go by the rules, even if that meant disregarding common ethics and care duties.

Margaret Haywood was made a victim of a painful contradiction between what is right and what is permitted. This contradiction is not inherent to the notion of rules; it would have been up to the Nurcery Council to treat this courageous individual according to the spirit and not only the letter of professional law.

Please click here to sign the Margaret Haywood petition.

3 comments:

  1. we have issues like that in some of our elderly care centers too. it does take some thick skin to stand up to an institution in the name of justice. god bless her heart for being that brave soul.

    the difference she made might never be measured, but will be greatly appreciated to the souls she touched!

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  2. I feel it is more ethical to expose the truth than to avoid/hide it. People (nurses) may escape from doing their duty but they can not escape the duty of consequences. I'll sign the petition.

    Keep blogging!

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  3. Thanks for signing! I don't know whether the petition will have any effect, but it is important that at least Margaret Haywood knows that she did the right thing.

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