A group of brazen California health care workers were fired for posting a “dehumanizing” TikTok video that mocked their patients in urgent-care exam rooms.
The since-deleted video shows several former employees at Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara posing with bodily fluid left by patients who were seated on the paper covering of the exam tables, captioned, “Guess the substance,” KTLA reported Wednesday.
“Are patients allowed to leave you guys gifts?” the workers wrote in the TikTok video, over an image of the smiling medical staff.
The second image shows a beaming female worker giving a thumbs-up while she hovered over a small stain left behind by a patient on the exam table, with the text “yes!” overlaid.
“All shapes and sizes,” another reads, showing a disturbing image of a different worker bending over a large stain on a different exam table while sticking her tongue out.
The final image shows multiple employees clustered around another exam table with a stain with the caption, “Make sure you leave your healthcare workers sweet gifts like these!”
Sutter Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care networks in Northern California, which is partnered with Sansum Clinic, stated that it was “deeply concerned” about the employees’ actions.
“We are deeply concerned about a disrespectful social media post made on a personal account by a former employee, and we are conducting a full review in line with our policies,” a Sutter Health spokesperson told KTLA.
The health care network stated that the individual who posted and all those who appeared in the viral TikTok have been fired as of Wednesday.
It claimed that a former employee, who hadn’t worked with the facility in two months, had posted the video on social media.
Sansum Clinic released a statement on Instagram on Wednesday saying it shares the “concern” raised by the video.
“Patient trust and dignity are always our top priority and any behavior that violates those standards is unacceptable,” the post read.
The video was originally posted by the user @angieuncut on TikTok, according to the Santa Barbara Independent.
Despite the video being deleted from TikTok and the user putting their account on private, screen recordings of the disturbing workers were shared to multiple other social media platforms, quickly causing outrage among users.
The brunt of the outrage came from the Reddit page r/Santabarbara, after a user shared the video to the sub hours after it was posted on TikTok.
Since being posted on Monday, the Reddit post has garnered over 1,000 comments.
One commenter, claiming to be a nurse, said the video left her “speechless” and bashed the workers for being “unprofessional and unethical.”
Another user stated they were going to “personally” report the video to Sutter executives and that the health care employees would “rue the day they posted this dehumanizing garbage.”
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