I read with much sadness about the suicide of the nurse who helped care for the Duchess of Cambridge. She hung herself after being fooled into thinking she was talking to a member of the royal family and passed the call through to one of her colleagues. There is a lot we do not know yet about this tragedy, in so far as who was this person who ended her life, leaving a husband and two children.
Public humiliation seems to be a trigger in many suicides, though I do not have stats on this. Any form of public humiliation, camouflaged as a prank is an aggressive attack on a person. In this age of instant news and need for ratings, the two Australian radio pranksters do indeed have blood on their hands.
The bottom line is human beings seem to enjoy playing pranks on people. I remember the popularity of Candid Camera years ago. That might have seems all in all good innocent fun, but nevertheless the basic form of “entertainment” is the apparent delight in fooling another human being.
Sure, you might argue, everybody enjoys a good laugh. But,this cruel attack was at the expense of another person’s professional reputation, who in all innocence was only trying to do her job taking care of such a high-profile patient such as the Duchess of Cambridge.
We might easily counter attack that pranks are in general just that; a prank meaning to be nothing more than a practical joke. But all practical jokes or pranks are disguised acts of aggression, because they are hurtful in making another person feel like a fool!
Let me be blunt! To humiliate any innocent human being privately or publicly is an act of emotional and psychic aggression, pure and simple. Most of us have been privately humiliated and bear the scars of these transgressions, though most of us are reluctant to share our ordeal out of shame.
Sure there are some personalities out there who deserve being publicly humiliated because of their own crimes against others, but frankly most of them are severe narcissistic types, who are not going to wither, nor kill themselves. Narcissistic personalities attacked publicly will write volumes in self-defense, rather than kill themselves.
An innocent human being who is a victim of a public humiliation, can feel mortally wounded. In a professional setting with a high degree of responsibility in caring for the royal family , I can only imagine the pressure was intense for all the nursing staff.
Jacintha Saldanha was said to have been very caring and conscientious in caring for patients. An immigrant from India, she had been working at the King Edward VII Hospital for 4 years. Friends and family described her as devoutly religious and extremely generous with others.
Just the fact that she was an immigrant, trained in her country of origin is already significant as all immigrants feel a sense of having to prove or justify themselves professionally against those colleagues who were native-born and trained.
We do not know much about this tragic lady, but I can only suspect she was probably perfectionistic and had a rather rigid sense of self-responsibility. When she discovered she had been fooled, she most probably was totally overcome with intense shame and felt completely responsible for allowing the call to go through.
The hospital was said to have been supportive of her, but I question this, knowing the inter workings of hospital hierarchy are quick to denounce or find fault with nursing personnel, who have the brunt of work and responsibility of patient care, yet the least amount of professional support.
She did leave three suicide notes, one in which she did criticize her employers and hospital staff. This fact alone is enough for me to validate my above suspicions that there must have been critical recrimination from her superiors or even colleagues.
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thank you for writing about this and making us all aware of this event. bearing up under such scrutiny is probably hard for all of us. Could you write about how one would go about withstanding public humiliation and coming out the other side unscathed, Cherry?
Thank you Pam for your comment and raising a good question. Frankly, I do not think anybody could walk away from this type of high profile humiliation unscathed. Committing suicide though is an another matter!
Anybody who is going to work in health care is at risk for making a mistake, however conscientious one may be. This woman never hurt or harmed anyone in line of her professional care of the Duchesse of Cambridge. Had she allowed herself to have enough slack regarding her own human vulnerability and accept that she too was a victim of a cruel hoax, she would have been able to walk away humiliated yet intact in so far as her self worth and integrity.
As I said in my post, I suspect she suffered quite a bit of critical remarks from either colleagues, supervisors or both. If she had had a decent and well formed sense of self and believed in her own self worth, she could have sustained this psychic abuse. The possibility that she was already fragilised by underlying depression and or anxiety could be construed as contributory.
Working on the front lines of health care, in providing direct care to patients is scary enough as there is always a margin for mistakes, whether you are a doctor or nurse. Most people do not realize that even if a physician makes a procedural or medication error for example, it is ultimately the nurse’s responsibility to catch the error and prevent carrying out any procedure or medication that is not appropriate.
Since this poor woman never made a mistake in clinical judgment though, only trying to be polite and accommodating to what she believed was a member of the royal family, makes her suicide even more tragic!
No one knows her mental makeup prior to her suicide, but nevertheless the hospital superiors, and colleagues should have cushioned her with the upmost empathic understanding rather than what I suspect was humiliating back biting criticism that pushed this woman over the edge to taking her own life. The bottom line is that we must all accept our human limitations in so far as being perfect at all times, and give ourselves healthy forgiveness and understanding when we fall short of our best intentions.