it looks like the nurse who committed suicide had attempted it twice before and was on anti-depressant medications.

b) It's Australia's royal family too, and still highly regarded by many people there.

I really am a loss to know why she was the "persecuted" person. She, from what I have read, "merely" took the call, acting as a receptionist, and passed it on to the floor nurse who then proceeded to be "duped".

I really am a loss to know why she was the "persecuted" person.

Morrissey, feh!

Reminds me of George Orwell's musing that he wished there was some kind of Moral Sanitary Authority that could rid the world of Stalin.

Earlier this year Morrissey, who lives in Los Angeles, slammed the ‘blustering jingoism’ of London (Olympics) 2012 and even compared the support of athletes to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s.

The evidence suggests that they never intended for the prank to actually work (would you really have someone pretending to bark like a dog in the background and the Queen saying something about feeding her Corgis if they seriously wanted to get through and get information from the hospital?).

I have no doubt they feel remorseful and sad for the tragic turn of events that they started. I'm sure they genuinely feel awful about it. They may be jerks, but they are still human.

Of course that's the case. Hopefully the family gets some good legal counsel and sues for at least 10x that amount.

Conditional on the family not launching a lawsuit?

Aussie radio station giving $524,000(US) to nurses family. Sounds like a little bit of guilt and a lot of PR to me.
»www.cnn.com/2012/12/11/world/asi···pt=hp_c2

So do you blame the DJs for her death? The Star thinks not.

quote:

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In truth, it was never remotely funny, that moronic prank pulled by a couple of jester Australian radio disc jockeys on a London hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was being treated for acute morning sickness.

The real sickness here is what passes for humour these days: The snark, the mean poke, the gotcha gouge, the juvenile punking. We are, it seems, endlessly captivated by the embarrassment inflicted on others, the shamier the better.

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quote:

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Blame, however, is a proportional thing, and it’s important to get the proportions right. Two morning DJs were doing their job in a way that has become not only accepted but expected; has anyone listened to morning radio in Toronto? It’s not long since Howard Stern was the boor-du-jour in this city. Greig and Christian crowded the line of good taste, and they crossed the line of confidentiality with respect to the Duchess of Cambridge’s condition. For those infractions, guilty as charged.

But did they cause the death of Jacintha Saldanha? Absolutely not.

We have no idea of all the factors — familial, cultural, social, personal, professional — that led to Saldanha’s death. Suicides are complicated, and there’s usually more than enough blame to go around. Greig and Christian will wear their share of guilt, but pinning the death solely, or even primarily, on two people who couldn’t possibly have foreseen this outcome is not just simplistic — it’s vindictive.

If either of them were next to commit suicide, who would we blame then?

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But a clue as to what may have caused this. Cultural factors may have been strongly in play.

quote:

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Ms Saldanha's family believe she died because of overwhelming "shame", it was reported.

She was a "proper and righteous person" who would have been "devastated" about what happened, her brother Naveen told the Daily Mail.

He said: "She would have felt much shame about the incident."

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quote:

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"It was meant to be a silly little prank that so many people have done before. The accents were terrible, it was designed to be stupid. There were corgis barking in the background, it was meant to be a joke.

"We couldn't foresee what would happen."

"It wasn't about trying to get a scoop. We assumed we would be hung up on and that would be that. We were meant to be told off and that was the gag, the joke was on us."

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quote:

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Ms Saldanha's family believe she died because of overwhelming "shame", it was reported.

She was a "proper and righteous person" who would have been "devastated" about what happened, her brother Naveen told the Daily Mail.

He said: "She would have felt much shame about the incident."

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Further, DJ's can and should amuse their audiences with intelligent discussions, not prank calls.

This was not a prank gone wrong. This was the management of a mental health issue gone wrong. Frankly, the more I think about it, the very hospital this woman worked for is more culpable in her death than the DJ's are. They had direct involvement with her immediately following the incident and chose to leave her alone instead of supervising her for possible suicidal tendencies. Clearly, they felt the prank was harmless as well, and they are the health professionals.

Why? For making a prank call? Which is pretty much an industry staple in the morning DJ world?

Do Canadian hospitals usually have volunteers to help out? In any US hospital I ever visited, their were unpaid volunteers(usually retired people) to do duty at information desks.

Fair enough, but when we went to the Civic today the information desk had no staff. I found that quite surprising considering just how big that hospital is, even on a Sunday.

I hope they have their asses fired and get black listed from ever working in the industry again.

Having observed hospital operation at night on many occasions, that is not always the case. It depends on the hospital.