Negligence of Public Healthcare Employees Leads to Dead Baby

In 2012, a public sector nurse’s laziness and negligence resulted in the death of sick baby that was likely preventable.

“Sorry about that,” the health minister said Monday, after a damning report  was released on the matter.

The story goes deeper than the scornful disregard of one bad nurse, however.

Numerous complaints were lodged against the nurse and nothing was ever done. The complaints were essentially buried. Instead, the nurse was promoted, endangering the community.

Typical public sector rewards for typical public sector job performance.

The system itself protected the bad nurse from any repercussion for her awful behavior. Does this sound like a good nurse that should have taxpayer funded salary and benefits?

Some of the accusations were shocking: that McKeown brought a premature baby awaiting medical evacuation to a party in the nearby nurse’s residence where others were smoking; that she rebuffed a woman bleeding after a hysterectomy and told her to consult the faraway hospital that did the operation; and that she’d misdiagnosed other patients.

When the market provides a service, customers are welcomed. Businesses earn their income to the extent they serve customers.

Government services expropriate their resources through taxation. To government employees, the taxpayer-customer is a nuisance that sucks up resources.

So you get lazy, contemptuous public sector workers like the Nunuvut nurse in this tragic story and it’s virtually impossible to fire them unless someone’s baby dies.