Unnecessary Deaths at Hospitals. What Goes Wrong?

 by Dinura Ranmandala

Gosport War Memorial Hospital

Hospitals are our safe havens, places where we can go to be healed and ensure our health is first-rate. It is definitely not the place we go to die unexpectedly - which, abysmal as that sounds, has, unfortunately, been the case in some hospitals. Now, I am ever-grateful for the tremendous work done by healthcare professionals all around the world during these times of distress, but, whenever something goes wrong, attention must be given towards it.

In the United States alone, it was recorded that around 22,000 deaths per year that arise from hospitals were very much preventable. There are many reasons as to why these deaths occur and most of the reasons pinpoint to the single word: negligence. A doctor or a nurse must be very qualified in order to achieve the jobs they are doing right now but the rush to treat everyone quickly can put those skills under pressure.

One such example of this I would like to focus on is the infamous case of Gosport War Memorial Hospital, a prime example of the consequences that negligence can have in important workspaces such as care. Around 15,000 premature deaths were reported from the times dating 1988 to 2000; that’s around 15,000 families who lost a loved one unexpectedly and without any proper clarification as to how. Acts like these have really shaken up the community and have shone a light on various other scenarios like this where professionals weren’t doing the best of their abilities in said professions and were cutting corners.

What was so distressing about hearing this case is that the individuals under fire for this catastrophic event, were people who had spent years and years doing vigorous training and had sworn an oath to always protect and be there for their patients only for them to do the opposite and leave patients in a vulnerable state. While, of course, there are structural reasons relating to why the number of unnecessary deaths are at such a high, including lack of resources and long waiting-lists for patients, there are also cases where individual medical workers have been negligent and unprofessional.

I would like to end this off by thanking all the hard-working care professionals out there who have devoted their lives (and in a significant number of cases given their lives) to save the lives of others during the pandemic. For the sake of the overwhelming number of exemplary health ands care workers, it is essential that that tiny minority who have been negligent and unprofessional are called out and, where necessary, removed from their position.