It’s been what you might call a week of two halves at University Hospital Limerick. On Tuesday, the Irish Independent’s Eavan Murray broke a heartbreaking story about the death of a teenage girl at the hospital, the details of which are utterly shocking:
Another inquiry has been launched into the sudden death of a second teenage girl in the Accident and Emergency department of University Hospital Limerick three weeks ago.
The 16-year-old girl died suddenly on January 29, hours after she was rushed to UHL suffering from breathing difficulties.
The girl, a much-loved only child, died in front of her mother in what an informed source described as “deeply traumatic circumstances”.
We cannot pre-empt the results of an enquiry into that incident, but we can note that it is the second incident in the hospital to result in the loss of the life of a teenager, and to require an enquiry, in just a few months. It is also the second to occur after a long wait on a trolley.
In brighter news, the hospital’s wider management body – the UL hospital group – is launching a new initiative to encourage children to talk to hospital staff about their sexuality, replete with jaunty music and happy smiley people:
We mark the launch of the Rainbow Badge initiative in the Paediatrics department at UHL.🌈
This badge is all about showing inclusivity to our young patients and encouraging open conversations about sexuality with our staff members. #TeamULHG pic.twitter.com/thI4IYBX8j— UL Hospitals (@ULHospitals) February 20, 2024
There are a couple of things about that tweet that strike me and should, I’d suggest, strike everybody else as well:
First, why is it about “showing inclusivity to our young patients”? LGBT people come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. The hospital is as likely – if not more likely – to encounter gay and lesbian people in their 50s, 60s, and 80s as it is to encounter them in the children’s ward, where many patients may not even have reached the age where sexuality is a concern for them. The focus on children is objectively noteworthy.
Second, in what universe do sick children in hospital worry that discussing their sexuality with the staff may not be something they can do, either in general, or specifically because there’s an absence of a rainbow name badge on the nurse looking after them? Has the hospital group conducted any research into the potential demand for deep and meaningfuls between child patients and nursing or medical staff concerning their sexuality?
Third, to what extent are parents to be consulted about such conversations? Has the hospital considered, even for a moment, that parents who place their children in the care of a hospital do so precisely on the understanding that staff in the hospitals would not seek to engage in conversations about sex with their children?
Fourth, what has any of this got to do with delivering medical care? The state already provides, through schools – and countless NGOs – immense sources of funding for initiatives to help young LGBT people come to terms with their sexuality. Given that the funding for this initiative comes, as far as we can see, from the hospital budget, how is it an efficient or useful allocation of resources?
Fifth, to what extent is this fair on staff? What if you’re a perfectly conscientious nurse or medical professional who makes a huge difference in the lives of sick children, but draws the line at talking to children about their sexuality? Do you still have to wear the badge and advertise your availability for such a conversation? Are you obligated to participate in it?
Taken in the round, it’s all very hard to understand, if you consider the purpose of hospitals to be about restoring sick people to health.
Which poses the question as to whether that is, in fact, what a certain section of society considers the purpose of hospitals to be. I am reminded of the Yes Minister episode which featured a hospital which had 500 staff, and no patients, which Sir Humphrey Appleby declared to be “the most efficient and well-run hospital in Britain”. It’s all about what you consider the true measure of efficiency and output to be.
For most people, a hospital should be measured on patients recovering, and schools measured on student results, and gardai measured by crimes prevented and solved. The only issue is that the people running the country are not most people: For a certain segment of society, hospitals, schools and garda stations should be measured not on productivity, but inclusivity. Which, for example, is more likely to receive positive coverage in the media: The most efficient school in Ireland, or the most inclusive school in Ireland with the most diverse staff and pupil population? It is, at best, not clear cut.
Certainly, it is clear which is of more interest to staff and management across the public sector. There are, after all, standing inclusivity policies for almost every agency of the state, but few if any efficiency policies. It is probably not a coincidence that it is also objectively easier to print LGBT badges than it is to improve patient outcomes, and when you’re likely to get as much credit for doing either, you take the easier option.
The other factor here is defensibility: We live in a country where doing “inclusive” things can almost always be presented as a positive, and naysayers shouted down as having dishonourable motives underlying their concern, and so inclusivity creates a kind of tribal solidarity. If you’re a man or a woman of the progressive left, joining in attacks on the UL Hospital Group over their actual performance in terms of running the hospital might mean joining hands with people attacking the hospital group for wanting to talk to children about sex. As such, inclusivity measures like this become a badge of tribal identification, identifying the institution as a place of good morals, regardless of its results.
For most people, though, I suspect this kind of thing simply adds to the sense of a Government and a country that has given up on trying to fix hard problems, and is increasingly simply trying to paper over the cracks with rainbows. At some point, it’s all going to come crashing down.