Missing from Hospital
Description
In this episode we talk with Robert Cocks from Locate International focusing on people who go missing from hospitals. From vulnerable mental health patients to those undergoing routine treatment, we discuss how individuals in supposed places of safety manage to disappear, and why these cases frequently fall through the cracks of the system. Robert Cocks unpacks the patterns, institutional oversights, and urgent need for reform in how hospital disappearances are tracked and handled. Who is responsible when a patient disappears? And how can these systems be changed to prevent future tragedies?
Guests
Robert joined Locate International in October 2022 and became a member of the Operational Assessment and Research (OAR) Team. Qualifying as a doctor in 1981, he went on to train as a specialist in Accident and Emergency Medicine in London and Manchester. In 1995, he was appointed as Professor of A&E Medicine in Hong Kong and has conducted a wide variety of medical research. He retired from full-time medical practice in 2021 and continues to teach Emergency Medicine part-time in London and Hong Kong.
Robert volunteered with Locate because of a long-standing interest in people who die and remain unidentified and unclaimed (often after suicide) and the reasons why people go missing from hospital. Disappearances have lasting effects on the families of the missing, and he is committed to assisting in alleviating their distress, if only by providing closure and reassurance that everything possible has been done.