Patient Disrespect that I never admitted to.

by JoJo

I am a registered nurse and was fired for “disrespecting a patient”. I was working one night on the night shift when a co-worker was sitting with a patient at her desk in a chair. She called me over and asked me to be in a picture with him. I initially said no, but did agree after some convincing.(I was 7months pregnant and was used to people harrassing me for pictures.) He was awake and talking to her when this happened. It was a quick shot and only my arm (in which I was caring a straw for a drink for my patient) was caught in the picture. My co-worker then text messaged me the picture. I deleted it immediately.

I was fired because I later found out that this man in the chair was confused during most of his stay. It was assumed that I knew this fact when I was posing for the picture.(which I did NOT).Apparently my co-worker had sent this picture out to several other co-workers who may have found it offensive. My boss never even saw a copy of the picture. Although I did admit that it was my arm in the picture, I never admitted that I knew anything about the man and even said from the beginning that I did not know him at the time.

I did appeal the decision through the company’s appeals process and lost that appeal because my manager said that I had been his nurse during his stay 2 times and was charge nurse once. He was on our floor for 30+ days and I only had him 2 of those nights. I have many patients each night and don’t remember the details of each one. I had no idea who he was and certainly did not know he was confused. I assumed that he was alert and had agreed to be in the picture with his nurse who took the picture.

Hi JoJo,

I think what I’m missing here is why the picture was considered to be “disrespectful”. Are you leaving out some detail about the picture that would make it so?

Oh, and by the way .. what happened to the person that took the picture?