A nurse who posted a video of herself performatively grieving for a patient for TikTok is drawing a huge debate online. While no one believes that medical professionals don’t feel the pain of death, for many, it crosses a line when using those deaths for social media attention and setting up disingenuous scenes about someone’s actual loved one.
— nikki (@ateenyalien) July 2, 2022
- The original video has since been deleted. The clip was posted by @olivia_tylerr33, though the huge amount of backlash it received prompted someone, whether the original poster or TikTok itself, to delete it from the platform. Of course, this is the internet, so it was preserved and republished on Twitter.
- The nurse in the video seemed upset. The clip shows the nurse in the hallway alone, clearly stressed and sad. The captions “lost a patient today” and “shake of [sic], you have 5 more hours” appeared on the video while ‘Unstoppable’ by Sia plays over the video. Yikes.
- Who would think of making a TikTok after losing a patient? While there’s no doubt that what the nurse was experiencing in the video is something medical professionals deal with on a daily basis, the fact that someone dying prompted the desire to pop online for a quick vid struck many the wrong way. “aw man can’t believe my patient died let me go make a tiktok rq,” one Twitter user sarcastically commented.
- That video was far from the only one. After being horrified by the original clip, @ateenyalien went searching and it didn’t take her long to find more clips of nurses performing their grief for social media. The wording in the second video is identical to the one in the first one, but this one took place in a car park instead of in the hospital.
- Plenty of people think the nurse was being overdramatic. “You and I will be in hospital one day and we will not have chosen who is providing life-giving care to us. My kid calls me on her break to debrief when she loses a patient in E.R. She’s the charge nurse. 2 days ago it was at 8am, shift started at 7am. Our life isn’t this hard,” one person wrote. Another added a different perspective, writing: “Understandable. But our medical workers are really suffering both mentally and physically. They are like soldiers on a battlefield. I forgive them for trying to reach out for support in these horrible times. I’m surprised that they can put up with all of it. I couldn’t.”
Whatever your feelings, I’m pretty sure we can all agree that nurses don’t need to be making TikToks in the wake of patients dying.
there’s MORE???!? pic.twitter.com/vhtbxPnE2a
— nikki (@ateenyalien) July 5, 2022
You and I will be in hospital one day and we will not have chosen who is providing life-giving care to us. My kid calls me on her break to debrief when she loses a patient in E.R. She’s the charge nurse. 2 days ago it was at 8am, shift started at 7am. Our life isn’t this hard.
— Rudy Kehler (@RudyKehler) July 5, 2022
Understandable. But our medical workers are really suffering both mentally and physically. They are like soldiers on a battlefield. I forgive them for trying to reach out for support in these horrible times. I’m surprised that they can put up with all of it. I couldn’t.
— CashSmart the Affluent (@CashSmartLLC) July 4, 2022
If my nurse can’t be bothered to pay enough attention to spelling before posting a Tok I don’t want her anywhere near my chart
— CxO (@third_NFT) July 6, 2022
