Radio Pranksters Who Posed as Queen Pulled Off Air After Nurse's Death
Radio Pranksters Who Posed as Queen Pulled Off Air After Nurse's Death
The two Australian radio hosts who prank called the hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated have been pulled off the air "until further notice" after the hoaxed nurse was found dead today.
"Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) and 2Day FM are deeply saddened by the tragic news of the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha from King Edward VII's Hospital and we extend our deepest sympathies to her family and all that have been affected by this situation around the world," the radio station said in a statement posted on their Facebook page.
The station's chief executive spoke with the DJs, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, and "they are both deeply shocked," the statement said. The parties agreed that the hosts would not comment on the situation.
"SCA and the hosts have decided that they will not return to their radio show until further notice out of respect for what can only be described as a tragedy," the statement said.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/royal-hoaxers-pulled-off-air-nurses-death/story?id=17903539#.UMJENKnp4Vs
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For entering a profession where the stress levels are phenomenal; where you are required to sacrifice your own health, finances, and families for assholes like the "shock jocks" that pulled their stupid-shit prank and put her career on the line for the "fun" of publicly humiliating her in front of her colleagues and the world; where other people's lives depend on you all day or night; where everybody in line ahead of you might fuck up and if you're the last one in the line that costs a life your career is over; where privacy laws rule every word you say and scrap of paper you toss in the wrong place; and where somebody trained as a nurse was made to fill in for a receptionist.
She was right to kill herself. I can't tell you how close I've come to suicide in my 2 years of training in med lab technology and my 1 year on the job. As of 2 weeks ago I've returned to the CSR job I had while in school. Too bad she only had her nursing career and nothing else to fall back on. But I suppose that was her fault too.
for the impaired
No, it's not her fault and it's not their fault either.
You can look all day long for someone to blame, for someone to burn, but at the end of the day some tragedies just don't have anyone to blame. This is one of them.
However, if you DO really need someone to blame, you should start with the media that hyped this to the extreme and played the tape over and over and over, and whipped up millions into a frenzied outrage. Had the media not done that, how many people would have heard about this? How many would have cared?
(And this is NOT )
Hospitals are not the place to be playing pranks. This is on a level with fake 911 calls and should be made illegal.
People go to hospitals because they are seriously ill or injured. Employees in hospitals have enormous responsibilities -- they literally have lives in their hands.
The job is complex and demanding. The work environment is extremely stressful. The hours are long and exhausting, the workload can be quite high and fast-paced, the investment in training is extremely high and the pay quite low. It takes a very dedicated person to make nursing their career. There is a reason there is a chronic shortage of nurses.
The price for making mistakes is very, very high. The mistake those assholes deliberately and maliciously tricked her into for their supposed entertainment were career-ending, with or without publicity. Not long ago, the hospital that I am leaving escorted a receptionist out the door for making a privacy mistake.
Obviously there would be publicity -- that was the nature of their stupid and cruel stunt. The fact that it involved royalty just made the situation for that poor woman all the worse.
It was a vile, vile thing to do. Beyond thoughtless. Those assholes should be forced to spend a year scrubbing floors on a burn ward. Frankly so should anybody else who thinks this was some harmless little joke. 
Yes, that certainly describes a minute-long conversation in which the "pranker" says hello and asks how someone is doing.
Here is the entirety of the conversation:
NURSE: She’s sleeping at the moment. And she had an uneventful night. And sleep is good for her. As we speak, she’s been getting some fluids to rehydrate her. She was quite dehydrated when she came in. But she’s stable at the moment.
GREIG: Okay, ill just feed my little corgies then.
CHRISTIAN: Lovely. But they’re all okay, everything’s alright?
NURSE: Yes, she’s quite stable at the moment. She hasn’t had any retching with me, since I’ve been on duty. And she’s been sleeping on and off.
CHRISTIAN: Wonderful.
NURSE: And I think it’s difficult sleeping in a strange bed as well.
CHRISTIAN: Yes, of course! It’s hardly the palace, is it?
GREIG: Oh, it’s nothing like the palace, is it, Charles?
Oh wait. It involves "royalty", as you note. Thus it was necessary for people to get OUTRAGED over this call. If we'd been talking about a mere "commoner", few people would have given a shit. Like in this case:
There's another "prank call" to a hospital. But nobody gave a shit that it was done because a "royal" wasn't involved. In fact, you can do a search on YouTube and find many more. I personally think 99% of prank calls are stupid and lame (this one and the others found on YouTube) with only a few being really well done.
But I'm talking about the selective outrage here.
NOBODY here on this site gave a shit when news of this call was released. Now suddenly people are talking about how horrible and cruel it was. Well if the prank itself was cruel then it would have been so whether this nurse committed suicide or not; yet no one here was calling it cruel. And the nurse, as far as we know, had NOT been fired.
You know, the part with nurse on duty as receptionist whom they tricked. Not the nurse who gave out the info, the nurse they tricked. The one who killed herself as a direct result.
And exactly what do the other instances have to do with this one? What is your point? This one led to outrage not because it was heavily publicized due to the victims, but because it drove somebody to SUICIDE.
Just because nobody noticed the other prank privacy violations doesn't mean they weren't important too. A lot of threads disappear on DU before they're ever seen. If the targets in this case were as famous as the Queen of England, then it probably would have been seen. That has zip to do with the outrage.
What part of this do you not understand?
There are only certain people allowed medical information. Any violation of patient privacy -- no matter who it is -- is grounds for termination. Deliberately tricking somebody into inadvertently breaking a rule is a vicious and cruel thing to do regardless of the intended target.
No, she wasn't fired, as far as we know. That does not mean she was not about to be fired, or punished in a big way, or tortured into quitting. Do you think that does not happen? For all we know, she may have found herself right back at square one, scheduled to work 14 hour overnight shifts forever or until she quit or died, whichever came first. Because if you think managers won't torture people into quitting, you are living in a very different working world than I've lived in for the last 50 years or so.
All prank calls to hospitals are stupid and they all should be illegal. In this case, a prank call led directly to a suicide. In another case, it could easily lead to distraction that could impact care of other patients.
Maybe the publicity surrounding this one, not to mention the minor little SUICIDE, will lead to action against deliberate perpetrators of privacy violations, instead of only leading to action against their victims.
But just keep trying to find some reason that it's nobody's fault this poor nurse was driven to suicide.
