Bad examples

The doctors and nurses involved in the Black Suede Scandal at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center are facing sanctions for mocking a gay patient they were operating on. There is, however, another mistake that they should also be punished for “being bad examples” to student nurses and medical interns.

 The VSMMC is a training hospital, which means that there are student nurses and doctors, known as interns, who are assigned there.  These interns help doctors and nurses in the performance of their duties in different departments in the hospital.

For sure, there were interns assigned to observe or assist during the surgery to remove a can of body spray lodged in the rectum of a gay florist. For sure, these interns were as curious as the full-fledged doctors and nurses assigned to the surgery on the uniqueness of the procedure. When their superiors started taking videos of the surgery using their cellphones, the students readily followed thinking it was okay to do so. They laughed with the doctors and the nurses when the canister was removed and someone shouted, “Baby out!” The students observing or assisting in the surgery must have enjoyed the procedure, just as the other doctors and nurses did.

And just like their superiors, the students forgot their duties to the patient. They forgot that as future medical practitioners, it is one of their duties to protect the patient they are attending to and it is wrong, very wrong to mock a patient no matter how unique his or her situation is.

“Ang ginagawa ng matatanda ay nagiging tama sa mga mata ng mga bata.” Who can blame the student nurses and doctors for doing what they did? They were just following the actions of their superiors.

    Now, a student nurse is being blamed for uploading the video to YouTube. We do not know the motive of this student nurse in uploading the video, “the student probably wanted to share the ‘fun’” or the student probably wanted to let the world know that the full-fledged doctors and nurses who conducted the surgery are such bad examples to students. The student, who is said to have already graduated, is now taking the heat for uploading the video.

But consider this, if the student did not upload the video, the mockery that happened inside the VSMMC operating room, the doctors and nurses who ridiculed the clueless patient, the circus that happened there, would have remained a secret.

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