Editor,

I applaud The Record for insisting that Whidbey General Hospital (or WGH) be held to the highest standards of truthfulness and transparency. Those like myself, who enter the health professions, know we will be held accountable to the communities we serve. We ought to expect the same from the hospitals where we work.

I was employed as a registered nurse (or RN) at WGH in the Home Health and Hospice department from 2006 until I resigned in July of 2011. Earlier that year, a situation arose where I was accused of wrongdoing in the care of a hospice patient. The hospital then went on to make a public statement that charged me with full responsibility for the miscarriage of care despite the fact that I was following a doctor’s prescribed order and never acted outside of nursing practice guidelines.

The hospital’s published version of the sequence of events, their insistence on this version, left me with little room for recourse. In addition, I was ordered to be silent, to speak to no one, to have no contact with my supervisors, colleagues or other community members at the risk of termination.

So I was silenced. When I attempted later with legal counsel to counter and provide more information which would have corrected and exonerated the now public charge against me, WGH continued to suppress crucial facts. These missing facts would have shown the complexity of the situation and that the charges against me were false.

It seems to me there is a culture of secrecy at work. How does a public hospital get away with suppressing full disclosure? Who decides what is made public? What is a hospital’s ethical responsibility to its community?

The Record is wise to insist on transparency. This is not happening at WGH.

DIANA DEERING, RN

Langley