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Originally Posted by Salu
The SCBU isn't a public ward but the hospital have obviously felt the need to address the disturbances that are happening. The hospital has said it has no problem in people cooing at full term babies providing the ward rules are followed and the parents don't mind.
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The thing is, none of this came to light initially. It appeared that the ban was universal. Granted we haven't seen the original press release or been privy to any interviews the hospital may have given to the Press, but what was in all the headlines yesterday was that the hospital felt it was striking a blow for the human rights of newborn babies. This is what makes me very, very suspicious of the hospital's subsequent 'clarifications' of the issue. It seems very strange to me that an institution primarily concerned with the health of its inmates should choose to highlight human rights as a reason for doing something, and then to insist on the good clinical reasons only after the story hit the headlines.
I tend to think that what we have here is a ridiculous piece of overzealous bureaucracy by a middle manager desperate to justify her pay grade, who, to her credit, told the truth behind her policy when initially challenged. When it became clear that the hospital was being made to look very stupid indeed, the PR department got involved and issued a 'clarification' that this applied only to the SCBU and was for clinical reasons. The thing is, you would have thought that in those circumstances such a policy was nothing new, not controversial and something the hospital was doing anyway. So what on earth moved Ms Lawson to invoke 'human rights' in the first place?
At the very least this demonstrates why hospitals should be under the management of experienced clinicians and not bleeding heart public sector bureaucrats.