Was this nurse being inappropriate or just doing her job?

When Katie Smart took her nine-month-old son to the hospital in the US – after seeing him twist his ankle, and deciding that she should have his fever checked out at the same time – she wasn’t expecting to be called a “loser”.

Indirectly, anyway.

Before she and her son left the hospital, she saw a note from the nurse that had been left behind in their room. It was directed towards another person – presumably another member of the hospital staff – and read: “need to fx fever; 0 immunizations … Loser!”

This is how The Stir reported on the issue:

Smart says that she felt “judged” after seeing the note. And with good reason — she totally was! Doesn’t get much more judgey than the word “loser,” does it? “For her to say that, she doesn’t know why I choose not to vaccinate,” Katie said. She added that she and her husband chose not to vaccinate two of their three children after researching the ingredients of vaccinations.

Now, while we can all agree that “loser” is not a nice word, the fact here is that the nurse is a medical professional. A medical professional who – while perhaps using unprofessional language – is no doubt deeply troubled by seeing kids brought into the hospital every single day who haven’t been vaccinated.

And so often the reason these kids haven’t been vaccinated, is because their parents have done research on the internet (which, let’s face it, is not always the most reliable of sources) and stumbled across anti-vaccination scaremongering.

Let’s not forget: the reason vaccinations have been created is to combat incurable diseases. Incurable diseases, that many children around the world still die from.

The nurse in question has since been suspended from her job at the hospital.

What do you think about this situation? Was the nurse being inappropriate, and should she have been suspended? Or was she just trying to do her job? 

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