When is a prank not a prank?

. . . and you believe everything you read on Google . . . Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
 
Do the hospital management have any questions to answer?

Why was this excellent nurse put in a position that she had to answer phone calls from the public?

Did the hospital have a protocol or standard operating procedure for dealing with such calls from the public?
 
oldnick said:
Bullbar -like conmen , tv/radio pranksters do their pranks for financial/material gain.
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To call comedians con men is a stretch. I never recall Mike Murphy or Jeremy Beadle being accused of being conmen after many years of provifing such entertainment.

To say its now on the same lines as fraud is nonsense.
 
As far as I know Mike Murphy or Jeremy Beadle never contributed to a death. The Australian DJ's went beyond the elastic limit and caused the tragedy.

Put yourself in the Receptionist's place. It is not unthinkable that the queen would ring the hospital. It is likely that she has the use of a private mobile phone, you know, and she is entitled to use it.

Hospitals have protocol and operating procedures but on the spur of the moment these can cease especially at a busy hospital reception area. I heard on the early RTE radio news that the DJ's responsible have gone into "hiding."
 
Leper said:
. . . and you believe everything you read on Google . . . Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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Not read on Google, first hand knowledge and it's alsolutely correct.

Unfortunately, the poor nurse who answered the phone wouldn't have known that this is the case and thought she was talking to the Queen.
 
Leper said:
It is not unthinkable that the queen would ring the hospital. It is likely that she has the use of a private mobile phone, you know, and she is entitled to use it.
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Its totally unthinkable. You dont end up on the phone to the Queen of England by accident.

But clearly this poor woman didnt know that.
 
Sunny said:
None of us anything about the poor woman and what was going on in her life. It's very very rare that one event causes people to take their own lives.
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I agree - but that is what really gets to me about prank callers. They often know little or nothing of the victim, maybe this lady was suffering from depression, or was going through a divorce, or financial issues or was homesick and this was the final straw. Who knows, at any one time we are all going through a myriad of emotions and issues, none of which prank callers care about.

This has become a big story because she has committed suicide but if she hadnt it still would have had potentially very serious ramifications for her including potentially losing her job and that too would have effected her family and children.

Why is humiliating someone, ie prank calls, still considered - by some - funny?
 

Explain how they contributed to her death? Was she not responsible for her own actions? She put a phone call through, she wasn't even the one giving out the details. If I got sacked in the morning, and I killed myself, should my boss be held responsible?
 
The egg-shell skull theory is a theory in law which states that the victim of a crime must be taken as they are- so in normal circumstances if I flick my finger at someones head, the worst they will experience is a simple momentary hurt. But if that someone's skull is egg-shell thin, I could kill them. Am I responsible for their death?

Poor old Mattie McGrath seems to have been the latest victim of a telephone prank. Frankly you'd think the callers would have outgrown such a childish prank. http://www.independent.ie/national-...e-bank-tds-pizza-prank-backfires-3319830.html
 
Would the panel answer this - if you stood idly by whilst a stranger drowns even if you could have saved him - could you be found guilty of murder or manslaughter?
 
Vanilla said:
Poor old Mattie McGrath seems to have been the latest victim of a telephone prank. Frankly you'd think the callers would have outgrown such a childish prank. http://www.independent.ie/national-...e-bank-tds-pizza-prank-backfires-3319830.html
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This reflects very, very badly on the 5 TDs involved, who sat in their offices laughing at a colleague who was doing his best to represent and defend a family having goods forcibly repossessed. I really wonder what they found funny about that.
 

FYP

I don't even think the family were from Mattie McGraths constituency yet he was still trying to help.
 
It was a really stupid and irresponsible prank and no, it wasn't a bit funny to broadcast private details about a pregnant woman who was ill in hospital. It is unbelievable that the station managers thought it was suitable for broadcasting or that the DJs thought it was something to boast and brag about on Twitter.

However, at the end of the day, that's what it was - stupid and irresponsible. The people involved were at best thoughtless, at worst very uncaring of the embarassment and potential trouble they were causing to innocent people. They were not malicious people deliberately taunting and bullying someone to her death. Yet, if you were to read some of the comments being made, those two DJs are practically guilty of murder.

I don't in any way condone what they did, but I think they deserve a bit of sympathy for the horrific consequences of their joke which will no doubt cast a shadow over their lives for a long long time.
 
This raises two (general) questions:

1) How does the hospital typically establish the identity of callers before providing private medical information

2) What process the Radio station has for screening recorded calls / interviews in terms of being open to potential litigation

I'm sure any organisation would have weaknesses in thees processes and their implementation, so it's very hard for us to apportion blame without knowing whether the processes in place were adequate and whether those people charged with implementing the processes had appropriate training.

It would seem particularly unfair to blame the DJs in this case as they do not decide on whether recordings can be aired.

As for the nurse, everyone makes mistakes at work and most of us will have been subject to some kind of reprimand. It's part of everyday life and you have to assume that people can make a mistake, take their sanction and move on, otherwise nothing would get done.
 
DerKaiser said:
1) How does the hospital typically establish the identity of callers before providing private medical information
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I dont think any private medical information was aired beyond "she has stopped retching" (I could be wrong).

The problem is, even if the hospital dont 'normally' give out any kind of medical information over the phone, if someone actually believes they are speaking to the Queen of England, normal protocol probably goes out the window because the person is awestruck and wants to please Her Majesty.

Perhaps the hospital management thought it was so obvious that the Queen wouldnt be making calls to reception that they didnt think they had to spell it out for staff?

It is worth noting that the receptionist who passed on the call and subsequently died did not give out any medical information, she simply put the call through.

Unfortunately if you are going to play an irresponsible prank on someone you dont know personally, you do not know beforehand if that person is already close to the edge of things for whatever personal reasons and that one more incident could be enough to push them over the edge. That is why these types of pranks are silly and irresponsible.
 
I don't accept that what the receptionist did was directly caused by the DJ prank. She must have been unstable. It's a tragedy, for sure, but I wouldn't blame anyone
 
MeathCommute said:
I don't accept that what the receptionist did was directly caused by the DJ prank. She must have been unstable. It's a tragedy, for sure, but I wouldn't blame anyone
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And you have medical or psychiatry qualifications to back this up?
 
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