A former nurse has surrendered her license and was sentenced to three years of probation after she was charged for taking inappropriate photographs and videos of patients during procedures. Kristen Johnson, 27, was working in Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse, New York in 2014 when she used her iPhone to take photos of a patient’s penis and videos of intimate procedures such as the removal of a gastrointestinal blood clot. It’s believed she was then sharing them with other nurses, Syracuse.com reports.
- This was such a violation of trust. All of the patients whose procedures and body parts Johnson captured were incapacitated at the time of the crime. The fact that a medical professional who is meant to be caring for you would do something so terrible to violate the trust between medical professionals and patients.
- To her credit, she pleaded guilty immediately. Following her arrest in May 2015, Johnson pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disseminating of unlawful surveillance photos during her tenure at the hospital. The arrest came following a nine-month investigation by the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office after several of Johnson’s colleagues lodged complaints about her behavior.
- She decided to accept a plea deal. While she was originally charged with charged with two counts of second-degree unlawful surveillance and one count of second-degree disseminating unlawful surveillance, both of which were felony charges, accepting the plea deal reduced her charges to a misdemeanor. She was sentenced to three years of probation as part of the deal.
- Johnson had to surrender her license as part of the deal. According to the New York State’s Education Department, Johnson did not object to being declared morally unfit for practice and gave up her practicing license as part of the plea deal. Needless to say, she also lost her job at the hospital – in fact, she’d been fired before she went to court, according to Darryl Geddes, an Upstate University Hospital spokesman.
