Stafford Hospital: Ethical Issues and Operational Recommendations

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the ethical failures at Stafford Hospital, focusing on the period between 2005 and 2009 when approximately 1200 patients died due to poor care. The report examines the causes of the crisis, including lack of staff, inadequately trained staff, and reduced hospital spending. It explores whether Stafford should have been allowed to continue operating given the unethical behavior, which impacted staff morale, public confidence, and the hospital's reputation. The analysis highlights the importance of maintaining high standards of care, especially in healthcare. Furthermore, the report proposes recommendations for ensuring ethical behavior within the organization, such as staff training, internal and external audits, effective recruitment and selection, rewarding ethical conduct, and encouraging staff participation in decision-making. The report concludes that Stafford should not have continued to operate without significant improvements and adoption of ethical practices to protect patient safety and restore public trust. It emphasizes the devastating impact of the scandal on the NHS trust's overall image and the need for ethical leadership and management in healthcare settings.

ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL
SKILLS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This report had focused on importance of ethical behaviour for the organizations and
ways in which it can affect them. This report had focused on Stafford Hospital’s scandal in
which approximately 1200 patients died between January 2005 and March 2009 because of
various reasons such as lack of staff members, lack of quality of care, lack of provision of basic
necessities such as food, water, medicines and many more factors. This report had also focused
on whether Stafford engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate,
what can Stafford do to ensure ethical behaviour? And recommendations through which ethical
standards within an organization can be maintained.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Whether Stafford engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate...1
What can Stafford do to ensure ethical behaviour?.....................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................5
REREFENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Ethics can be defined as moral principles that helps in governing a person’s or an
organization’s behaviour. Ethics can also be defined as a system of moral principles that affects
the way in which people or organization’s make decisions (Dutta, Mishra and Budhwar, 2017).
Ethical behaviour is one of the most important factors which is required to be focused on by the
organizations. It helps in providing various kinds of benefits to the business such as reduces
employee turnover, increases productivity and many more. This report will lay emphasis on case
study of Stafford hospital. This hospital is facing situation of crises in standard of care because
of which 400-1200 patients died between January 2005 and March 2009 due to poor care. This
was mainly because of lack of staff; inadequately trained staff members were given
responsibilities beyond their capabilities. This was also because of wrong decision taken by
external bodies, management and board who were responsible for inspecting and monitoring
hospital care. Because of rising demand and tight budgets board cut down £10m from overall
spending of the hospital. It was also observed that staff members of the hospital lack
compassion, morale. This was affecting overall care level that was provided to the patients and
overall quality level of the patients was also degrading because of this. Stafford Hospital is run
by Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust and is a well- known trusted organization. It is extremely
important for them to maintain their overall reputation and standard. Maintenance of standard
and reputation of the organization is important because it will help them to boost morale of the
staff members, increase compassion in staff members. This will also help them to enhance their
overall quality of care provided to patients. The main aim of this report is to understand whether
organisations engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate and
things that can be done by organization to ensure ethical standards.
ANALYSIS
Introduction
This analysis section will focus on a case study of Stafford Hospital who are facing
various kinds of issues in standard of care which is provided to the patients. They have been
facing various kinds of unethical behaviour situation because of which between January 2005
and March 2009 approximately 1200 patients had died due to poor care and negligence of quality
care. This section will analyse whether Stafford should allowed to operate in unethical behaviour
by focusing on their unethical behaviour impact on hospital staff, public confidence and Stafford
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Hospital’s reputation other than this, this section will also focus on analysis of what Stafford can
do to ensure ethical behaviour.
Whether Stafford engaging in unethical behaviour should be allowed to continue to operate
Importance of maintaining standard of care
It is extremely important for organizations to maintain their standard of care and should
focus on operating ethically as it not only affects their reputation and quality of services that
are being offered to them but it also affects people associated with the organization i.e. their
customers, employees and many more. Especially for healthcare organizations it is extremely
important to maintain their ethical behaviour because it directly or indirectly impacts public
confidence in them and overall care which is being provided to the patients. Negligence of care
can result in degrading health of the patients sometimes it cost patient’s lives.
Factors that explains why organizations with unethical behaviour should not be allowed to
operate
There are various factors that can help in understanding that organizations that continue
their unethical behaviour should not be allowed to operate. In the case study of Stafford
Hospitals, they had given responsibilities to their inadequately trained staff members beyond
their capabilities for example night shift ward charge was given to junior doctors without
guidance of any senior doctors, or non- medical staff members were asked to triage patients (van
der Walt and Steyn, 2019). These kinds of issues were arising within the hospitals because of
lack of staff members and reduction of overall spending of the hospital by £10m were also
responsible for such kind of issues. These issues were also affecting quality of care that was
provided to the patients. Due to lack of staff members patients were not provided with food,
water, medicines on time. These issues were not only degrading standards of the hospitals but
were also affecting trust of patients within hospital staff members or within the hospitals. It is
one of the most important and serious issue which itself is sufficient to say that organizations like
Stafford should not be allowed to continue to operate until and unless they bring changes within
their standards, ethical practises. Hospital external bodies, management and board was only
focusing on reducing overall expenditure they were least focused on overall ethical behaviour of
the staff members or providing excellent service to the patients. They did not even focus on the
fact that due to lack of staff members patients were not receiving treatment which they should be
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provided with. This directly impacted all the staff members of the organization as their started
practising unethical practises, did not focus on patients, had low morale etc.
This scandal was one of the biggest scandals that reflected crises in standard of care of
the care because of which changes within overall behaviour of the staff members were also
observed. Most of the staff members behaved unethically, they lacked morale because of which
expectation of patients from the hospital were decreasing, lack of dignity in safe environment,
lack of maintenance of hygienic conditions from senior staff members were observed. Without
bringing improvement within their environment, adopting ethical practises, behaving in an
ethical manner, Stafford should not be allowed to continue to operate especially health and social
care organizations as because of their unethical behaviour their put lives of many patients at risk,
degrade the quality of care that should be provided to them. If extent to which the reputation of
the Stafford hospital has been damaged is observed or analysed then it can be said that their
overall reputation was damaged drastically. This is majorly because, this scandal not only
impacted Stafford hospital reputation but it also affected overall reputation of NHS trust and
image of the trust among people because their quality of care was compressed by the hospital,
because of this scandal many other trust were kept under investigation in order to ensure overall
quality care of the patients. This degraded quality of care of patients was going on from 2005 to
2009, they should have taken actions initially itself and should have focused on enhancing
overall quality of care and ethical behaviour this could have helped them to reduce number of
patient’s deaths that happened till march, 2009.
Conclusion
So, it can be said that it has impacted overall public confidance on the organization they
do not trust Stafford for provision of medical care and facilities provided to the patients.
Continuation of unethical behaviour within the organization has also impacted medical staff
members as they do not pay much attention on patient care some of them even lack morale. This
has drastically impacted overall reputation of the hospital helps Stafford should not be allowed to
operate till they bring improvement within operations.
What can Stafford do to ensure ethical behaviour?
Due to this scandal reputation of Stafford and NHS trust was damaged drastically, trust of
patients within the hospital and its care was reduced. It was extremely important for the
organization to ensure ethical behaviour within organization, its staff members and other people
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associated with the organization. Stafford could have worked on conducting various kinds of
ethical programs in order to observe misconduct and enhance their overall ethical behaviour. In
order to ensure ethical behaviour within the organization changes within overall culture of the
organization can be brought. Bringing changes within overall culture will also help in developing
a positive environment which will further help the organization to maintain their ethical
behaviours. Some other ways through which Stafford could have ensured ethical behaviour are
as follows:
Training is one of the best ways through which staff members or employees can be
educated about standards of quality of care, importance of ethical behaviour and ways in which
staff members can contribute in enhancing overall standard and reputation of the organization
(Ishak, Haronand Ismail, 2019). Training and development program can help the organization to
make their employees understand what is at risk how their behaviour would affect overall quality
care service which is being provided to the patients and their health.
Conducting internal and external audit can help Stafford to ensure ethical behaviour.
Conduction of internal and external audit can also help the organization to understand issues that
have being going on within the organization or issues that are being faced by the patients,
unethical behaviour of the staff members towards patients or other kinds of issues. Conduction of
audit can also help Stafford to understand level till which these issues are affecting the
organization. Both internal and external audit should be conducted within a fixed internal of
times so that all kinds of improvement made within ethical behaviour of an organizations and
analysis of issues that have been resolved (Baumane-Vītoliņa and et. al., 2017). Other than this
recruitment and selection of staff members plays a vital role in ensuring ethical behaviour within
the organization. While recruiting and selecting staff members organizations should both morale
and ethical issues that can occur ways in which staff members would be contributing in provision
of quality care to the patients.
Stafford should also focus on rewarding or acknowledging ethical behaviour of the
employees. Rewarding or acknowledging this kind of behaviour of the employees and staff
members will help Stafford not only to maintain ethical behaviour but will also help the
organization to enhance their raff members morale, reduce employee turnover and staff members
would be working more dedicatedly. This will help the organization to ensure their standard of
care, ethical behaviour.
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Other than this Stafford could have also asked their staff members to participate within
organizational decision making by explaining or making organization aware about the current
issues, ethical dilemma’s that are being faced by the staff members and patients (Maria, Githii
and Ombati, 2018). This will help the organization to plan ahead and ensure ethical behaviour of
the staff members. Employees could also be asked for writing their own personal codes i.e.
things that they would never do like ignore medical requirement of the patients, offer of
unethical incentives and many more. This will not only help the organization to maintain ethical
behaviour but will also help them to identify issues that can occur within the organization in
future.
CONCLUSION
From the above analysis it has been summarised that there are various kinds of issues
occurring within Stafford because of which their standard of care has been reduced, unethical
behaviour within the organization is increasing. Most of the patients are not getting proper care
they are not even provided with proper medical facilities. It has also been analysed that many
staff members lack morale, lack compassion which was affective overall quality of care service.
Other than this cost cut down made by the board also resulted in lack of required number of staff
members and because of these issues overall health of many patients was getting degraded and
more than 1200 patients died. It was analysed that Stafford should not be allowed to operate till
they ensure high ethical behaviour within their organization.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Here are various standards that can help Stafford which will help them to ensure their
ethical standards. Some of the recommendation on the basis of above analysis are as follows:
 First recommendation is to set some fundamental standards about patient’s safety, basic care
and effectiveness of their care. these standards will help the organization to maintain their
overall quality of care service which is being provided to the patients. Cause of death or
serious harm to patients by non- compliance should be treated as serious offence and strict
actions should be taken (Paludi, Cox and Rogers, 2019). All the employees should be
encouraged to report any kind of non- compliance observed by them so that stands of care
can be maintained and quality of care of patients can be enhanced.
 In order to identify issues faced by patients or any other kinds of issue working as a barrier in
provision of care of patients, auditing should be done. Both internal and external auditing
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should be done on the basis of UK’s ethical and auditing standards. This will help the
organization to ensure that all kinds of ethical standards are being followed by both staff
members and patients as well.
 One of the best recommendations to ensure ethical standards within the organization is
conduction of training and development program. These kinds of programs help
organizations like Stafford to educate their employees about fundamental standards of care or
any other regulations or compliances associated with care quality and patient’s safety.
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REREFENCES
Books and Journals
Baumane-Vītoliņa, I., and et. al., 2017. Ethical behaviour and honesty in post-Soviet business
environment. Baltic Journal of Management.
Dutta, D., Mishra, S.K. and Budhwar, P.S., 2017. Ensuring ethical competency measures in
organizations: An exploratory study. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol.
2017, No. 1, p. 12039). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
Ishak, N.K., Haron, H. and Ismail, I., 2019. Ethical Leadership, Ethical Climate and Unethical
Behaviour in Institutions of Higher Learning. KnE Social Sciences, pp.408-422.
Maria, M.J., Githii, W. and Ombati, O.T., 2018. Ethics and procurement performance of
humanitarian organizations in Kenya. American Journal of Industrial and Business
Management. 8(4). pp.833-849.
Paludi, M., Cox, J.C. and Rogers, H.A., 2019. Ethical Behavior as We Advance Technology. The
Journal of Government Financial Management. 68(1). p.54.
van der Walt, F. and Steyn, P., 2019. Workplace spirituality and the ethical behaviour of project
managers. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology. 45(1). pp.1-9.
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