In this case study, the incident of Gosport War Memorial Hospital in UK was described in which 456 patients were died due to medical malpractice during the time period of 1990. From the report it was seen that, almost 456 elderly people were given opioid drugs in a prescribed manner by the doctors. However, that was not needed at all and as a result the patients died (Darbyshire and Ion 2018; Boseley 2018). Moreover, the opioids were consumed in a very risky level and that led to a serious of investigations as they were not justified at all. All the drugs were recommended by Dr. Jane Barton during the 1990’s (Walshe 2018). It was observed by the medical consultants that, the patients were taking strong opioids. However, they failed to stop the matter as they could not intervene in the incident. Moreover, the nurses and the pharmacists had also failed to do anything in this matter as they had to follow the instructions of the hospital. However, a senior nurse of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital had informed about the matter to the Royal College of Nursing and she was instructed not to continue this matter and it nullified the chances of investigation. Most of the patients were in the age group of 61-99 years and the day after the drug administration, many patients died. According to the death reports of the patients, it was seen that, the major cause of death was to administer drugs without any clear reason and this indicated towards the neglected attitude of the hospital (Brown and Calver 2018). In 2009, Dr. Barton was presented in fronted of the General Medical Council for his negligence. She was convicted as guilty for breaching medical conducts but was not removed from the register. The family of the victims are still fighting for justice against the hospital authority and the doctor (Boseley 2018). The main aim of this study is to find the fact that how the reputation of the hospital was hampered due to this and how the hospital can bring back their altered reputation.
From the incident of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital it was quite evident that the medical malpractice had hampered the reputation of the organization along with the deaths of a huge number of people (Dyer 2018). In the following section, the role of medical misconduct and medical negligence in destructing the reputation of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital , are discussed.
As per the UK government, ethics is a very crucial factor for any organization and as well as for the health care organization and it is directly associated with public health. The health care professionals should always maintain the ethical code of conduct in order to secure the wellbeing of the patients. The NHS also concentrate on the practices of ethical codes in order to maintain safety, wellbeing of the patients and dignity (hra.nhs.uk 2018). Ethical codes helps to give protection to the patients from any mishaps due to wrong treatment and along with this, those ethical conducts also help in managing the health and wellbeing of the patients.
Medical ethics refers to the framework of ethical conducts for the health care professionals and it is based on four basic ideas. They are Justice, Autonomy, Non-malfeasance and Beneficence (Percival 2014). The term justice refers to the idea that, all the patient should have equitable and fair provision of care. The term Autonomy refers to the fact that all the patients should have the right of choosing the method of treatment so that they can also know about the whole process and they may give concern to their treatment procedure. The term Non- malfeasance refers to the fact that the health care providers will avoid any kind of activity that can harm the patient or the actions that will minimally harm the patient. They should maintain proper practice in order to prevent any health hazards and risks of the patients from the medical procedures. Lastly, the term Beneficence refers to the moral duty of the health care professionals to provide care with proper intention and along with this to provide maximum benefit to the patients (Hope and Dunn 2018).
The acts of breaching medical codes of conduct in the Gosport War Memorial Hospital by giving opioid overdose to the elderly patients and in addition, they also did not inform the higher authorities about this matter. By doing these they breached the policies like Beneficence and Non-malfeasance as they failed to secure the interest of patients by administering opioids to the patients unnecessarily. So it can be said that, breaching of such ethical code of conducts, had hampered the trust of people on the hospital (Griffith 2018).
The administrations of strong opioids drugs to the elderly patients often without any proper reason and that resulted in deaths of 456 patients. The opioid drugs, that were prescribed to the elderly people, were mainly morphine, fentanyl and diamorphine (Brown and Calver 2018). From a study it was seen that, the administration of the opioids caused the death of various patients of cancer, stroke, heart attack and bronchopneumonia. Thus administering of those drugs hampered the longevity of the patients and also resulted in various other medical complications among the patients of those diseases. The continue administrations of the opioids drugs has resulted in medical malpractice (Matthews-King 2018a).
According to a study by Boseley (2018), it was seen that, healthcare administrators should take the responsibility of the wellbeing and health being of the patients. The trust of the patients are dependent on the capability of the hospitals to maintain the safety and wellbeing of the patients as the patients have exact knowledge of taking care of themselves. As a result, patients are always searching for the experts who can take care of themselves. In addition to this, a high quality competency of the health care providers positively affect the trust and reputation issue of the organization and in contrast a low level of competency can hamper the fame and brand name of the organization (Sawer 2018). The failure of the hospital authorities in maintaining the safety of the patients indicated towards the fact that the hospital authority had lack in competence towards their responsibility. Ultimately it can be said that, the medical malpractice resulted in the destruction of reputation and trust of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital (Ward 2018).
The negative publicity by the media and newspaper also resulted in erosion of reputation of the hospital due to their medical malpractice. Report from the newspaper named The Guardian showed that, the health care administrator of the hospital overlooked the error as they had not assess the cause of the mishaps that happened to the patients properly and this casual behavior of the administrator caused more deaths of the patients (Boseley 2018). The Telegraph reported that there was not enough resources of the hospital and that resulted in medical negligence as the doctors were unable to give proper medications to the patients and that resulted in to rely on the strong opioids to manage the symptoms of the elderly patients (Sawer 2018). The Telegraph also reported that NHS was engaged to avoid the investigation of this incident and in addition to this HNS also involved in injecting strong opioids into the blood stream of the patients that caused multiple death incidents until 2013 (Ward 2018). A report from the BBC also confirmed that the patients of the hospital was given opioids unnecessarily and that there was no proper justifications of the opioid medications (Brown and Calver 2018). Another report confirmed that, investigation of this event had been blocked as police repeatedly stepped back from this investigation and along with this, authorities played a crucial role by recriminating the employees who tried to raise concern in that matter (Matthews-King 2018a; Matthews-King 2018b).
From those reports, it was completely clear that hospital had faced a huge bad publicity due to their failure in maintaining the responsibilities of themselves. The negative media publicity also caused breaking of trusts of the people on the organization as the various reports showed that the organization is not competent and they failed to maintain the ethical policies and that resulted in deaths of 456 patients of the hospital. The lack of openness culture within the NHS had also promoted medical malpractice and ceased the chances of investigations also (Observer 2018). NHS is always being the trustable organization for gathering trust and competency, so the breaking of trust and good reputation of the hospital was promoted by the negative media publicity also.
A new investigation was initiated by the Gosport War Memorial Hospital in 2018 for compensating their negligence. The family members of the adverse drug victims launched complains against the hospital management for their negligence in administering excessive opioids without any proper medical needs and along with this their lack of interest in preventing that incident also. In spite of investigating they even tried to cover up the incident ( Boseley 2018). Dr. Baron also faced criminal charges as the family of the patients launched complained against the doctor. Various complains against the hospitals also lowered the trust of the general population and caused erosion of their reputation in front of general public. As a result, people no longer showed faith on them and they suspected towards the ability of the organization as well. In addition to this, legal complaints against the hospitals decreased the reputation of the hospital in front of the other health care organization in the similar sector of the world (Ward 2018).
Conclusion
The Gosport War Memorial Hospital in 1990, initiated the practice of administering excessive dose of opioids to the elderly patients of their hospitals in order to manage their several problem. The management of the hospital had failed to assess the problem properly and after understanding the problem, they deliberately tried to mask the incident. This resulted in death of almost 456 people and the doctor of the hospital, Dr. Baron was directly responsible for this incident. The family members of the victims had launched complains against him due to his irresponsibility. This medical practice caused deaths of many patients along with hampering the reputation of the hospital organization. In addition to this, the medical malpractice also hampered the reputation of the organization and the negative media publicity also promoted the mistrust issue against the organization among the general public.
The following recommendation can be proposed in order to rebuild the trust of people towards the hospital. They are –
(Boseley 2018; Sawer 2018; Ward 2018).
References
Boseley, S. , 2018. Gosport hospital: more than 450 patients died due to opioid drugs policy. the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/20/gosport-war-memorial-hospital-opioid-drugs-policy-inquiry [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Brown, D. and Calver, T. , 2018. Gosport: The numbers behind the scandal. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-44574899 [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Darbyshire, P. and Ion, R., 2018. The Gosport War Memorial Hospital Panel report and its implications for nursing. Journal of advanced nursing.
Dyer, C., 2018. Gosport hospital: GP prescribed opioids that shortened at least 456 lives.
Griffith, R., 2018. The Gosport inquiry and the principle of double effect. British Journal of Nursing, 27(13), pp.762-763.
Hope, T. and Dunn, M., 2018. Medical ethics: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.
hra.nhs.uk., 2018. Research Ethics Service and Research Ethics Committees. Health Research Authority. Available at: https://www.hra.nhs.uk/about-us/committees-and-services/res-and-recs/ [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Matthews-King, A., 2018a. Hampshire police to ‘step back’ from investigation into Gosport deaths. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/gosport-hospital-scandal-latest-hampshire-police-jane-barton-investigation-deaths-a8410856.html [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Matthews-King, A., 2018b. Hundreds of whistleblowers claim they faced recriminations as NHS fears repeat of Gosport scandal. The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/gosport-scandal-latest-inquiry-jane-barton-whistleblowers-deaths-war-memorial-hospital-a8410761.html [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Observer. T., 2018. The Observer view on Gosport War Memorial hospital | Observer editorial. the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/24/the-observer-view-on-nhs-gosport-hospital-culture-of-not-listening [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Percival, T., 2014. Medical ethics. Cambridge University Press.
Sawer, P. 2018. Dr Jane Barton blames ‘inadequate resources’ as she breaks silence over Gosport hospital deaths. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/27/dr-jane-barton-blames-inadequate-resources-breaks-silence-gosport/ [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
Walshe, K., 2018. Gosport deaths: lethal failures in care will happen again.
Ward, V. , 2018. Gosport inquiry panel accused of “NHS cover up” over faulty syringe drivers. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/23/gosport-inquiry-panel-accused-nhs-cover-faulty-syringe-drivers/ [Accessed 18 Dec. 2018].
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