Big Brother

Ever since reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, aged 16, I've felt mildly on edge about the idea that we live in an society with an increasing amount of surveillance. Forgive me if my initial statement sounds incredibly cynical. In all honesty, I do agree that CCTV and other monitoring systems tend to serve a great purpose in the majority of circumstances. I must say, I'm less of a fan when 'cookies' on my browser ensure that I have continual adverts tempting me with that pair of shoes that I desperately want (but cannot afford) keep popping up on the side of my Facebook page. 

The important thing that I'm trying to say here is that I think that there are some circumstances in which surreptitiously 'keeping an eye' on people is simply inappropriate – particularly in a healthcare setting. On the few occasions in which it has been done before by healthcare professionals who felt that their concerns had been ignored by the appropriate parties, undercover filming has certainly worked. Take the damning scenes at Winterbourne View revealed to the public back in 2001, for example...watch the video below if you haven't seen it already (I should warn you that some of the imaging may upset you).

                                                             (Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=subMgwyJOK8)

Despite this, the suggestion (albeit a few weeks back now, I'm behind with my blogging) that using hidden cameras could become part of the inspection regime in care homes next year still does not sit well with me. First and foremost, as the new adult social care chief inspector, Andrea Sutcliffe, rightly points out because of the need to respect the privacy and dignity of the residents of these homes. Perhaps we can justify filming ‘snapshots’ of poor care and retrospectively gaining consent from those who we have filmed in order to provide evidence to make a change. It might even be possible to say that doing so was necessary to get your voice heard in order to make positive changes for patient care.

I would argue that to condone undercover filming (and thus to make it a societal norm) seems to miss the point. Why don’t we deal with poor care before it happens, rather than try to catch truants out in a way which compromises the dignity of the vulnerable when it’s simply too late. Okay, rant over.