Hospital Safety and Quality Medical Services

This document provides a comprehensive analysis of recommendations to improve hospital safety and quality medical services. The author highlights the significance of preparing clinical staff for collaborative work with caregivers, fostering a culture of shared accountability, and utilizing all ethical norms in an organization. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of reducing communication gaps between providers, hiring efficient and educated staff like nurses and physicians, and providing them with necessary training to prevent mistakes. This assignment is crucial for healthcare professionals seeking to minimize patient deaths and improve overall care quality.

Academic and
Professional Skills

Table of Contents
Executive summary..........................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Role of ethics in Gosport War Memorial Hospital Case Study..................................................1
CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................................4
RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................5
REFERENCE ........................................................................................................................6

Executive summary
Gosport War Memorial Hospital is lacking behind in maintaing ethical measures due to
which many innocent patients were led to death. In this case study mal pratices were conducted
and many innocents were led to death. Lack in management and not conducting ethical practices
led to such an mis-happening in the hospital.
INTRODUCTION
Professional skills means those skills which are career abilities or competencies which
are acquired as a part of coursework which are not taught by anyone. Whereas, academic skills
includes studying of matter rather than using technical or practical skills in reality. It is important
because deep knowledge in academic skills provides opportunities, steady income in future. It
helps to boost the career of an person if he/ she posses good academic skills. Some of the
professional skills are, project management, conflict management, leadership, mentoring etc.
which are value added skills necessary in career (Bhatia, 2014). This skills are important in
business because professional skills decide the success and failure of an employee in the market.
In this everything is figured out like, how employees handle their workload, cooperates with
other members or team, acts around the office place to determine employees positive and
negative aspects.
Gosport War Memorial Hospital is located in Gosport, England. It is part of Southern
Health NHS foundation trust. It was founded in the year 1921. This hospital joined National
health service in 1948. In the year 1990s new maternity ward was opened in the hospital.
Hospital type is district general. This report is based on a case study where, 456 patients died
because of medical malpractices at Gosport hospital in the year 1990s. Died patients were given
opioid drugs which resulted to death of the people in the hospital. The consultants were well
ware about the practices carried out in the hospital but did not intervene. The families of the
patients are still fighting for justice in court. It throw light on ethics importance and how it is
important in hospital success and failure in the market. As well as organization measures are
studies to assure ethical practices (Ciulla, 2014).
Role of ethics in Gosport War Memorial Hospital Case Study.
As per the case study of Gosport War Memorial Hospital, in which 456 patients lost their
lives due to the unethical practises followed by the organisation (The uncomfortable truth about
1

the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths, 2019). This was done intentionally and entire staff
and consultants were involved in this and gave opioid drug to the patients (The uncomfortable
truth about the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths, 2019). And the senior nurses who has
taken action regarding this and brought the matter in front of the Royal College of Nursing and
were asked to keep silent. This has proven to be the most inappropriate and misconduct of ethical
considerations which is essentially required to be followed by the organisation.
Ethics is a concept which determines the right and wrong for the society. It is a useful
tools which helps in answering the morality of living beings by rendering them with the set of
different types of correct and incorrect, good or evil methods of working. They are required for
the well being of the society and the overall good of the individuals. The philosophy of ethics is
much more deeper than what it has been seen on the surface level. It plays a very crucial role in
business academics and professionalism because it is an essential part of foundation on the
businesses. It does not only define the way in which a person behaves but also the manner in
which organisation reacts. It holds greater importance in academic and professional skills of the
individual.
It is crucial to maintain ethical code of conduct at workplace. If Gosport War Memorial
Hospital, has maintained proper ethics then the life of patients could be saved. People go in
health and social care organisation to become healthy and get rid of the diseases from which they
are suffering from but this organisation has played with the life of 456 patients. By setting work
ethics, the organisation can work more smoothly and efficiently (Coates, 2016). It does not only
set good working environment but also teach the employees, nurses and doctors about how to
deal with their patients and clients in different situations.
According to the Gosport War Memorial Hospital Case Study, ethics is concerned with
analysing the problem which has arise and uses various values, facts and logics to decide the best
action which is to be taken. Some ethical problems are straight forward while some are not.
Doctors of Gosport War Memorial Hospital thinks that ethics is a esoteric field which eradicated
from practical consideration of clinical practise.
Regular auditing and reviewing of doctors, patients and medical department from
external sources or auditing teams is very important for the Gosport War Memorial Hospital so
that this gives an assurance regarding the consistency and authenticity of the organisation. It will
provide the customer with the fact that the organisation sells unexpired and reliable medicines
2

which will not affect the individual. These medical ethics are required to be developed by the
Medical association of the UK and is required to be made essentially important and obligatory
for every health and social organisation to get registered themselves under this. It will assure the
protection of rights and interest of employees and patients who are directly or indirectly involved
with the organisations operations. If their were proper ethical issues, then the families of the dead
patients were not fighting for the justice from 20 years. There are various ethical laws which
have different standards and grounds.
Medical malpractices cases needs proper and authentic evidence of harm and medical
boards can take actions against the unethical behaviour even when no harm has been taken place.
But still no action was taken against the Gosport War Memorial Hospital in which people lost
their lives. When nurses raise their concerns regarding the unethical practises and when relatives
complained to authority, the response was one of disinterest and disconnect. Managers and
bureaucrats hid behind procedures, processes and rules (Cottrell, 2017). They closed ranks, they
occupied in interpretive denial and the facts were in front of them, they could see what they
stacked up to, but they chose to interpret those facts in ways that justified not acting.
Therefore, ethics play a very important role in every business organisation and proper
ethical laws are required to be followed in the organisation so that people will feel safe, secure
and trust the Gosport War Memorial Hospital. By following ethics, unethical practises can be
avoided and proper treatment of the patients will take place. Apart from this, the human resource
team must hire those individuals and doctors who have proper experience and review all their
information and background.
Ethical measures
For the purpose of assuring proper code of conduct is to be followed by the Gosport War
Memorial Hospital, there are various ethical measures. These measures can be implemented and
employers of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital must establish clear standards for measuring
ethical behaviour to accomplish the business goals and objectives. This can be done in the
following ways :
 Customer complaints : Regularly and continuously tracking and analysing customer
complaints which will bring out whether the company or organisation is able to
accomplish the ethical performance standards (Stewart, 2014.). For instance, if an
individual or group of people file a complaints regarding any issue like the health and
3

organisation is not providing what it was expected than the business owner is responsible
for finding out the true and authentic information by asking their sales staff of medicines
about the complaints of the patients (Critchley, 2014).
 Goal setting and evaluation of performance : The owner or the person who is
responsible for managing the authenticity of the Gosport War Memorial Hospital is
responsible for maximising the ethical performance of the company. This will require
communicating the present performance levels and goals.
 Environmental protection measures : Due to scarcity of resources, Gosport War
Memorial Hospital must put emphasis on sustainability and ethical standards of the
environment. It must focus more on minimising waste and increase the use of sustainable
materials. For instance, they can use recyclable face mask, bags, medical boxes, etc.
 Provide support routes to staff: Gosport War Memorial Hospital needs to develop or
frame or design transparent and clear path for reporting if any suspected activities like,
violation , fraud, misconduct etc. are seen in premises of the hospital. Business associates
should take immediate steps towards this and must adopt zero tolerance approach in this
matter.
 Measures ethics programmes: Gosport War Memorial Hospital should measure their
effectiveness of ethical activities so that proper practices can be conducted for patient.
Top level management should evaluate every now and then the ethical conduct in the
hospital sector so that misconduct can be overcome at the initial stage (Gess, 2015).
 Make ethical strategy a priority: In Gosport War Memorial hospital sector ethical
strategy should be on top priority so that mis-conduct or malpractices does not take place
and innocent lives of people can be saved.
CONCLUSION
From the above case study it can be concluded that hospital business need to carry out
ethical practices in their organization. If the ethical norms are followed properly by the hospital
industry then many innocent lives can be saved. In the above case study it can be seen that staff
members were aware about the malpractices practices carried out in the hospital but were silent.
Which resulted to innocent death and a big question mark on the ethical practices carried out in
the hospital (eters, 2015.). It indirectly leads to failure of the business market ratio in the global
village. Also, trust and faith of customers regarding the hospital services is lost to some extent.
4

This type of activities bought a big question mark on everyone who are associated with hospital
industry in the market place. It negatively affected the emptions and feelings of the people
regarding malpractices carried out which leads to death of innocent people.
RECOMMENDATIONS
From the above case study following recommendations can be given to the Gosport War
Memorial Hospital. Recommendations are basically given to the organization so that futher
improvements can be done and reinforcement of brand can be build again by rectifying the
earlier mistake. Here are some of the recommendations given to the hospital which are as
follows:
1. Prepare clinical staff to work with caregivers as this will help to build empathic clinical
staff in the hospital so that good care and medical treatment can be given to the patient.
2. Create culture of shared accountability in hospital so that every patient in the hospital can
be cared properly and no one says this patient is not my (Hoaglund and Box, 2014). This
will help the hospital to build trust and faith again in the eyes of the customer.
3. Turn out caregivers into allies so that better treatment and care of patients can be given
both at home and in the hospital and they can be cured at the earliest.
4. Hospital should use all ethical norms so that no mal-pratices can be carried out in an
organization and no innocent people are lead to death.
5. Hospital should hire desirable physician integration so that patient can be cured properly
and death ratio can be reduced and peoples emotions are not hurt.
6. Communication gap should be raised between providers so that effective results can be
seen in hospital. Transparent flow of two way communication helps the patient to get
better treatment facility by which chances of death decreases (Percival, 2014.).
7. Death ratio of patient can de decreased by providing them quality medical services as
well by hiring efficient and educated staff like nurses, physician etc. so that chances of
mistake is eliminated and no innocent patient pays for it.
5

REFERENCE
Books and Journals
Bhatia, V. K., 2014. A generic view of academic discourse. In Academic discourse (pp. 31-49).
Routledge.
Ciulla, J. B. ed., 2014. Ethics, the heart of leadership. ABC-CLIO.
Coates, A. J., 2016. The ethics of war.
Cottrell, S., 2017. Critical thinking skills: Effective analysis, argument and reflection. Macmillan
International Higher Education.
Critchley, S., 2014. Ethics of deconstruction. Edinburgh University Press.
Gess-Newsome, J., 2015. A model of teacher professional knowledge and skill including PCK:
Results of the thinking from the PCK Summit. In Re-examining pedagogical content
knowledge in science education (pp. 38-52). Routledge.
Hoaglund, A., Birkenfeld, K. and Box, J., 2014. Professional learning communities: Creating a
foundation for collaboration skills in pre-service teachers. Education.134(4). pp.521-
528.
Percival, T., 2014. Medical ethics. Cambridge University Press.
Peters, R. S., 2015. Ethics and Education (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.
Stewart, C., 2014. Transforming professional development to professional learning. Journal of
Adult Education.43(1). pp.28-33.
Wald, H. S., 2015. Professional identity (trans) formation in medical education: reflection,
relationship, resilience. Academic Medicine.90(6). pp.701-706.
Online
The uncomfortable truth about the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths. 2019. [Online].
Available Through : <https://www.bcu.ac.uk/news-events/news/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-
the-gosport-war-memorial-hospital-deaths>.
6