A Florida nurse who made questionable posts on social media while “mocking” a newborn baby with birth defects now quickly learned a hard lesson.
Sierra Samuels, is a Florida nurse who seemed to have trouble following the privacy law especially she is assigned to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
Sierra posted a caption on her social media that wrote, “My night was going great then boom!” alongside of the picture of the newborn taken inside the hospital’s NICU, the newborn reportedly had a birth defect cited gastroschisis.
She also captioned on her Instagram account that has 600 followers, “Your intestines posed [sic] to be inside not outside baby!” which is a complete mockery of the newborn birth defect.
NY Post reported:
While working as a nurse on the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Sierra Samuels posted two photos of a newborn patient with an abdominal wall birth defect to her Instagram account. Because of the nature of the social media posts, Samuels was accused of “cruelly mocking a newborn with a birth defect, hospital officials said.”
The Blaze also reported:
“Gastroschisis is a birth defect of the abdominal (belly) wall. The baby’s intestines are found outside of the baby’s body, exiting through a hole beside the belly button,” the CDC explains, adding, “The hole can be small or large and sometimes other organs, such as the stomach and liver, can also be found outside of the baby’s body.” Luckily, the survivability rate of gastroschisis is 90%.
The hospital have placed Sierra on administrative leave for violating the privacy rules and later on got fired.
The hospital said in a statement, “Employees who violate these privacy rules, despite being educated, are subject to disciplinary action included suspension or termination.”
WFOR reported:
“Following the investigation that then spanned over a month’s time, Sierra Samuels was terminated, fired for posting photos on social media that cruelly mocked her newborn patient. Samuels not only breached the newborn’s privacy, but she also violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.”
“In addition to the general HIPAA violation that we’d be looking at here, there’s a sense of decency about the rights and expectations we all have in our likenesses and our images,” Miami attorney David Weinstein told the station. “With images, you have a certain expectation of privacy that if you’re in an area that you’re in an area that you believe to be private and in this case a hospital, even more so.”
Watch it here: Youtube/CBS Miami