Posted on 04/21/2010 7:45:48 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
A King County jury on Wednesday ruled that a nurse did not violate the constitutional and legal rights of a Seattle woman who was barred from her domestic partner's hospital room in the hours before the woman died. Sharon Reed believed nurse Karen Hulley pushed her from the room at the University of Washington Medical Center in September 2005 because Hulley was opposed to her sexual orientation, according to Reed's lawyer. But jurors on Wednesday deliberated only about 40 minutes before voting 10-2 to dismiss Reed's suit, which sought $600,000 in damages. In May 2006, Reed sued Hulley, AMN Healthcare, the health-care staffing agency that placed Hulley at the hospital, and the UW Medical Center for causing emotional distress, violation of her constitutional rights and reckless disregard of her legal rights. The suit against UW was later dismissed, but over the past eight days a jury heard the civil case against the remaining two defendants in King County Superior Court. Hulley, a 32-year-old who has since returned to her home state of Tennessee, was accused in the lawsuit of being determined to keep the lesbian couple apart because of homophobia. But the defense claimed Reed, 71, upset her partner JoAnn Ritchie and interfered with her care as the woman fought for her life.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Why didn’t these women have each other on the list of people allowed to see them in the hospital? I have to keep a card in my wallet to let my pastor come to visit me, otherwise they won’t let him in. Everyone can do this, are they just so freaking stupid as to not know this?
“Hulley, a 32-year-old who has since returned to her home state of Tennessee, was accused in the lawsuit of being determined to keep the lesbian couple apart because of homophobia. “
What, “homophobia” is now a legal term??
I knew it had made its way into the DSM-IV (Psychological Manual) as an authentic disorder. But now it is considered a legal term also?
We have gone beyond sanity.
And everyone wonders why there’s a nursing shortage....
The jury should have awarded Judy a square yard of shag carpet.
There’s no nursing shortage, just a shortage of nurses who want to work in environments like this.
Maybe you should try suing for religious discrimination. I’m sure the ACLU would back you completely. /s
Amen and that’s the truth!! I spent 30 years doing nursing and I hope I earned my Angel Wings for it. I sure put up with some dysfunctional situations and that cost me a lot over the years.
Well I guess there is no reason at all for hospitals to take Medicare or Medicaid patients any longer.
It is a money looser and it comes with way to many strings.
It usually never occurs to the GLBT crowd that sometimes it's not about them and their pudenda.
The only thing I could think of while reading this story is the nurse having to go through this circus to keep her license and integrity....not to mention the financial hardship it caused her.
As a nurse, my duty is to protect and promote the health of my patient. If I see my patient’s O2 level is dropping to a dangerous level because the client is taking off their mask to speak to a visitor, I would say to the visitor “Ms. Doe needs to keep the mask on at all times, please encourage her to do so”. If the opposite happens, I am kicking them out, even if they have permission to be there. We are not there to treat the visitors, but the patient.
Given that, it’s totally reasonable they kicked her out.
Some doctors can be a pain in the arse also..some are great..You lose real quick automatic respect for them and that to know the good ones from the jackass's..
Pretty clear that, whatever mistakes this nurse may have made, this was not about a 71yo woman having a female significant other, as if “keeping them apart” is going to change their relationship on her deathbed.
That said, and granted we don’t have all the details - if I’m at death’s door and I want to talk to someone important to me I don’t want the nurse to make that impossible in the name of patient safety or to prolong my life by a few more minutes. There are few things more tragic than how we isolate the dying from their friends and families.
No offense taken, GG, and I have frequently run interference for my patients when they have let me know that certain visitors’ interactions with them aren’t going to be exactly therapeutic. That’s different than how we chase folks out when their loved one takes a turn for the worse.
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