Blog 3: Death of babies at University Hospitals of Morecambe
Bay NHS Trust
This week's
topic in class talks about the ethical relativism theory of ethics and why it doesn't
quite encompass all the truths of ethics. Ethical relativism states that there
is no universal truth and that each culture has its own set of rules. Furthermore,
those rules are valid for that culture and should not interfere with our own
set of rules. Although this is an interesting and relative way to ethically
reason, there are many reasons why it doesn't fit. For example, not being able
to criticise another cultures act such as the holocaust in Nazi Germany is a
near impossibility which negates we would be able to hold to this theory. Later
on in the chapter, we learn about James Rachels values that all cultures share
universally. One of these is a policy for caring of infants to ensure the
continuation of the group.
The death of 11
babies and one mother at the University Hospitals of Morcambe Bay NHS Trust can
further enforce that belief. We hear stories of malpractice in hospitals all
the time, but when it deals with over 12 avoidable deaths within a 9 year span
it's hard to ignore. One of the greatest joys in life is having a child. For
your child to be taken from this earth within 9 days due to negligence is
unacceptable. A big reason why we don't hear of atrocities like this is the
"nobody gets hurt" attitude hospitals and midwife associations take
to bury these kinds of stories. It's completely unethical and results in sloppy
procedures that get people killed. I wish we could say this was an isolated
incident, these practises are happening all over the world and they need to be
stopped. I hope the new National Director of Patient Safety, Dr. Mike Kurkin,
will be able to make a difference in this hospital and echo those policies to
the rest of the medical community.
No comments:
Post a Comment