A group of California urgent care workers have been fired after they callously mocked patients in a now-viral TikTok video.
The shocking post featured a photo series of employees at the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara posing with patients’ bodily fluids that were left on exam tables.
‘Are patients allowed to leave you guys gifts?’ reads the text over the first image, showing seven employees in scrubs.
The next four slides showed staff members pointing and laughing at stains on the exam table. One woman was seen sticking out her tongue over a mark on a chair.
The caption on the video read ‘guess the substance!’
It ended with a picture showing at least six employees gathered around one exam room table, with some in a praying pose.
‘Make sure to leave your healthcare workers sweet gifts like these,’ the text over the photo read.
Sutter Health, the group that manages the Sansum Clinic, told KTLA the video was posted to TikTok by a former employee who left the organization in late July.
That former employee apparently deleted her TikTok account as the video began to spread, and caused outrage online at the clinic – which bills itself online as the ‘largest nonprofit outpatient healthcare organization between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.’
‘Our dedicated, highly-trained doctors and compassionate staff are an integral part of our history, alongside that of our city, which has always been advanced in the medical sciences despite its small size,’ the Sansum Clinic boasts.
‘Our longevity is rooted in our ongoing investment in the latest equipment and technology and our recruitment of the brightest physicians, which combined, enable us to deliver the high-tech and high-touch elements of quality healthcare,’ it continues.
But on Reddit, residents are calling the post and the actions of the healthcare workers depicted in the video ‘dehumanizing,’ ‘unprofessional and unethical’ and ‘childish behavior.’
‘If that is what they post publicly, imagine what goes on privately,’ one Reddit user wrote.
Others pointed out that the user who shared the video had previously shared similar content – including one photo of a toilet stall splattered with feces with the caption, ‘A great way to start my shift,’ according to the Santa Barbara Independent.
Meanwhile on Yelp, the clinic has been inundated with one-star reviews.
One review on the site called out the fact that the workers in the video ‘were stupid enough to post these pictures with their faces.
‘Makes me not trust their competence as medical professionals,’ the reviewer wrote.
‘I am considering leaving Sansum as a whole after this. These are extremely cruel, genuinely soulless, heartless and brainless people.’
By Wednesday, Sutter Health announced it has fired the health care workers who participated in the video.
‘Sutter Health has terminated the employees responsible for the inappropriate and insensitive photos posted on social media,’ the company wrote on its social media.
‘This unacceptable behavior is an outright violation of our policies, shows a lack of respect for our patients and will not be tolerated.
‘Protecting the trust of those we serve is our highest priority and when that trust is violate, we take swift action to address it,’ the health care group continued.
‘We expect all team members to live our patients = first mission and uphold the highest standards of compassion, professionalism and respect.
‘We are using this inappropriate incident to reinforce our comprehensive policies with all our team members across the organization as part of our commitment to providing all patients with high quality, compassionate care.’