Friday, March 15, 2013

You Can Make a Difference
by Doug Capra and Joel Sherman

Saturday, July 21, 2012


(This article crashed and had to be reposted so it is out of order and comments were lost.)

A Follow Up on ‘Juicy Nurse’
         Activism works. Especially in patient modesty and privacy violation where most people are passive and don’t complain.
         Why? Perhaps because offenders are not used to people complaining and are caught by surprise. Some may not even realize the seriousness of their insensitivity. Others certainly know these kinds of violations exist but, over the years, have convinced themselves that the events are not that important because – after all – no one seems to care.  No one complains.
            In January 2011, we published an article that described blatant patient privacy and modesty violations written by two nurses in their separate blogs. In essence, we chastised the nurses for what we consider their immaturity, insensitivity and lack of ethics regarding respecting the dignity of their patients and their profession. Before readers go any further with this article, we would ask that you read the above article we wrote and the excerpts from the now deleted blog of ‘juicynurse’ which are appended at the end of this article. 
            As we mentioned in our article, we did not know the identity of the apparent nurses authoring these blogs.  Fortunately, one of our readers, who prefers to stay anonymous on this blog read our article and was able to positively identify the nurse involved by the email address she provided on her site.  The nurse also gave her name in another section of the blog for a poem she wanted credit for.  With this information he was able to find her present site of employment where she has worked for years , nearly all of her professional career, as that of a large Miami hospital which we have previously identified.  He then wrote to the hospital informing them of this nurse’s online activities.  A few days later the blog was deleted.  The hospital through their public relations department thanked our reader and assured him that the problem was being taken care of, but would give no details claiming that all employment information was confidential.  We do not know the legal status of that claim, but it is commonly made.    With our reader’s permission, I also wrote the hospital and received a similar response.  They guarantee that action has and will be taken, but give no specifics.  In short, ‘juicy nurse’ has been identified and likely chastised by her employer, though we have no assurance that she is not still involved in patient care cataloging all the intimate details she has seen.  If we were patients at the hospital, we would refuse care from this nurse.   In our opinion a nurse so obsessed with the sordid and intimate details of patient care should not be involved with patients, probably not with nursing at all. 
                  We went beyond this by also sending a complaint to the Florida Department of Health.  We ultimately received a reply that the conduct of juicy nurse was not covered by their regulations and they would take no action.  They based this on the fact that no names are given in the article and thus no violations of privacy in their point of view.  This is surprising to us as enough detail is given that several patients the nurse describes could recognize themselves by her description.  A particularly horrible anecdote concerns a fully described disabled obese elderly woman who ‘juicynurse’ discusses in the crudest terms possible.    We believe revealing potentially identifiable data is prohibited under HIPAA.
                                   In a recent KevinMD article, Dr. Chris Gibbons, associate director of the John Hopkins Urban Health Institute and director of the John Hopkins Center for Community Health, wrote:
     "If you are serious about change you must be willing to endure a lot of discomfort. While this is no doubt true, I would take things one or maybe two steps further and say, 'Disruptive change will only happen when you become uncomfortable with being comfortable!'”

     He's speaking from inside the health care community, talking about making changes from within. The same may also be true for patients working from the outside. But not always.  In the case we've described, neither we nor our activist poster had to go through discomfort to get the attention of this hospital and this blog removed.

     Dr. Gibbons also wrote:
     "Whether the goal is personal weight loss, professional achievement, disparities elimination, patient access to personal health data, societal health improvement, or global peace, resist the logical, evidence based tendency to be satisfied with “change,” and release yourself to achieve what others think impossible by first becoming uncomfortable with being comfortable."

     We urge our readers to get involved. Be proactive. Don't be afraid to make civil complaints and provide solutions. And if you are ignored, don't give up. Resend those letters with copies to the media, if necessary.  As Dr. Gibbons suggests, don't be comfortable with an unfair status quo. Be uncomfortable with it. And do something.
The following are copied from juicynurse.blogspot.com which was deleted several days after our astute reader filed a complaint with BHSF.  There were also other posts which in my opinion are worse than the ones we’ve reprinted in that they are so graphic patients could likely identify themselves:
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NO JUDGEMENTS HERE! ENJOY!
Monday, September 7, 2009
PENIS!
BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND.......THE PENIS!

I have to talk about this! I know the men followers will probably not enjoy this, but it needs to be discussed. I have seen so much PENIS in the last 8 years! I did not realize in nursing school the variety of PENIS that I would be exposed to, I mean in the text books......a penis is a penis, but in the real word the PENIS is always an interesting surprise!

I have seen big penis, small penis, hidden by huge bush penis, "that's it?" penis, peek-a-boo penis, smelly penis, dirty penis,oozing penis, uncircumcised penis, young penis, old penis, swollen penis, uncomfortably hard every time I walk in the room penis, paralyzed penis, white penis, Jewish penis, Asian penis (not good), I can't find your penis because you are tooo fat penis, famous penis, HOLY SHIT that's a large penis, penis, and the SURPRISE, I am a white man from the waist up and a black man from the waste down penis!

It is true what they say about the black man.  I have seen A LOT of black man penis and it is NEVER small.  From the time these penis's enter the world they are HUGE.  It is UNBELIEVABLE!  The little black babies have penis's that actually flop up over their belly buttons. When I worked in pediatrics, I was shocked at the head start that these little black babies get....they are ahead of the game from day 1!

I once had to take care of a famous Miami coach.  In between juggling his girlfriend and wife, we would chat here and there.  He asked me to get him some pain medicine and when I did and came back to the room, I opened the door and I saw him standing up with the urinal in between his knees.  I quickly thought to myself, "that's weird....why is he holding the urinal in between his knees?"  Then I realized, "HOLY SHIT THAT IS HIS PENIS ALL THE WAY DOWN THERE"  It is TRULY AMAZING!  I have never seen anything like it and instead of quickly closing the curtain or running out of the room, I stood there like a little girl seeing a penis for the first time.  I was truly shocked and I eventually stuttered my way out of the room, dropping the medicine, staring at the penis and walking out of the room backwards like an AWKWARD mess!

I guess in nursing school they just figure that a penis is a penis!  They do not warn us of all of the interesting penis that we will encounter in our careers for fear that we will giggle our way through nursing school.  Sometimes we find a nice surprise, sometimes it is small, sometimes it is smelly and sometimes it is truly freakishly large......they all work the same way but at the end of the day.....NURSE'S LOVE A GREAT PENIS STORY!

Posted by www.juicynurse.net at 8:34 AM
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Well, I guess I can not leave the women out! After the Penis post.....that would not be fair!

Ladies......your junk is disgusting! For god sakes.....TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!

I am up in everyone's business ALL of the time and I have to tell you, it is AWFUL! I have actually offered to PAY someone to put a Foley catheter in a women for me! I HATE IT!   Where is the freaking hole man?.....no wonder men are so confused! Don't get me wrong, I KNOW anatomy! I know where things are SUPPOSED to be.......but the older and fatter you get the more FREAKING CONFUSING it is! There is NO text book urethra for a women! "Why isn't any urine coming out?", we wonder......."oh, i know......BECAUSE YOUR IN THE FING VAGINA!"


It is the most disgusting.........I don't mean to offend anyone, but the thinner you are the easier it is, not much, but a bit easier. We do not have stirrups when we(nurses) do this.......we HAVE to be able to hold the legs back, maintain sterile technique and insert the Foley catheter........if you are not able to help us at all, it makes it very difficult.......smelly.......and sweaty......!

Like I said, I would rather pay someone.......does that mean I am prostituting my services?
JUST DO US ALL A FAVOR AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!

Wasn't it the grandmothers of the world that said, "make sure you have clean underwear on when you leave the house because you never know!"
 
Illustration from another article from juicynurse.blog about a fat woman blowing farts