From “Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding healing and hope in sharing our sadness, grief, trauma, and pain” by Jeffrey Munroe
After a career spent working in nonprofits, I know first hand that institutional administrators feel more pressure to protect and preserve their institutions than to ask profound questions about the nature of justice and what institutional forgiveness might look like. In my career, when difficult situations arose, our first call was not to a philosopher or ethicist or theologian who could help us think deeply about justice (and, when I worked at a seminary, those people were in the building). We called our attorney, who worked to protect the institution.
More than half of the hospitals in the U.S. are nonprofits, and hospital administrators are accountable to boards of trustees made up of wealthy people who have a fiduciary responsibility as trustees. Like many mature nonprofits, hospitals have large endowments, sometimes not just in millions, but billions of dollars. Those assets are inviting targets for the unscrupulous and I have sympathy for the pressures faced by institutions. Ultimately though, institutions are made up of people. Imagine the emotional and spiritual consequences for the doctor whose error killed Quiniece Henry. I wonder if there could have been a route that offered forgiveness and healing, not just for the Henrys, but for the doctor also. What would it take for institutions to see that the sort of mediation Marilyn mentioned is not only in the interest of the aggrieved family, but in the interest of the institution as well?