Communication is first casualty of a medical disaster — this needs to stop

Aeschylus claimed that truth is the first casualty of war. Communication is the first casualty of a medical disaster.

Portlaoise General Hospital’s communication with the newly-bereaved parents of dead babies is just the latest in a steady drumbeat of failure by medical professionals. It is the latest, but repeats, with dreary similarity, the physical and verbal offences of previous incidents.

Thirty years ago, when I made an educational video to help staff in maternity hospitals cope with the communications exigencies posed by stillbirth and perinatal death, the most upsetting on-screen witnesses was a man who, having done his best to comfort his wife on the loss of their newborn, ducked into a sluice room to weep in private, only to find himself facing his dead son, abandoned, bloody, naked, in a sink.