How a nursing student got expelled for blogging

Here’s an example of how health care professionals should not blog.

Michelle Fabio writes, in a guest post on Better Health, about the travails of a nursing student, who blogged about watching a patient give birth:

When school officials read [nursing student] Yoder’s post, which included a description of the baby as a “creep” and “a wrinkly, bluish creature, all Picasso-like and weird, ugly as hell, covered in god knows what, screeching and waving its tentacles in the air,” they moved to expel her from school by calling her into an office, searching her for weapons (apparently because Yoder had separately blogged about her support for the Second Amendment), and informing her she was no longer enrolled at the school.

That’s right. No hearing, no notice. Expelled from nursing school for blogging.

But here’s where the story gets interesting. The student then sued the school in federal court, and won. Although she disclosed several pieces of information that can be construed as identifying, the court rejected that argument, finding in her favor. Lucky for her.

In any case, I’m pretty sure the legal ordeal was not worth the blog post. With medical students already are under fire for potentially revealing patient information on Facebook, providing incendiary commentary on patient cases is simply foolish, and it’s only inviting trouble down the road.