Visiting a clinic for a sensitive medical matter is awkward. You have to show off parts of yourself you generally want to keep under wraps and disclose potentially embarrassing personal information. All you can do is remind yourself that doctors and nurses are professionals, that you’re just one of many patients they’ll see today, and that they have a duty to keep your medical details private.
Sadly, the Sansum Clinic (run by Sutter Health) in Santa Barbara smashed a wrecking ball through that trust this week. The staff there posted a now-deleted TikTok captioned “Are patients allowed to leave you guys gifts?”.
The video then consisted of photos of disposable table paper covers stained with various bodily fluids, with the staff joking that patients came in different sizes and “all shades and opacities”. They even snapped a shot of one nurse squatting over the exam table, captioned “Make sure to leave your healthcare workers sweet gifts like these!”
They might have expected to get some laughs, but the world responded with stunned outrage. The TikTok was soon posted to Reddit, with the top-voted reply saying: “As a nurse I feel second-hand embarrassed. This is beyond unprofessional and unethical.” Another vowed to escalate this, saying, “This team is going to rue the day they posted this dehumanizing garbage.”
What was going through their heads?
It went viral and proved to be a PR disaster, with the clinic bombarded with one-star reviews from horrified people. Now, thankfully, all involved have been fired. The clinic underlined that the video was originally posted by a former employee who left the clinic in July and released a statement explaining:
“Sutter Health has terminated the employees responsible for the inappropriate and insensitive photos posted on social media. This unacceptable behavior is an outright violation of our policies, shows a lack of respect for our patients and will not be tolerated.
Protecting the trust of those we serve is our highest priority and when that trust is violate, we take swift action to address it. We expect all team members to live our patients = first mission and uphold the highest standards of compassion, professionalism and respect.”
All in all, a depressing moment for U.S. healthcare. Anyone who’s worked with medics will know they can be quite mean behind closed doors about more difficult patients (though always keep things anonymous), but anyone with a tiny bit of sense would know that posting this kind of stuff on social media is a huge no-no.
We’re glad justice is done and these people are no longer working with patients, but there remain questions to be answered about why anyone would think this was something to post online.
