Source: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images / Getty
A nurse was terminated from the Good Samaritan University Hospital in New York after video footage captured the unidentified employee slamming a 2-day-old baby down in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The incident occurred shortly after Consuelo Saravia and Fidel Sinclair welcomed their adorable baby named Nikko, NBC New York reported.
According to the outlet, Sinclair said he grew worried when he heard his son crying uncontrollably from the NICU and peered in to watch what was happening through the window’s slightly drawn curtains. As he was recording his newborn son from the nursery, Sinclair was shocked when he caught the NICU employee picking his son up and flipping him over onto his face into the bassinet.
“It just broke me,” Sinclair told NBC New York. “I didn’t know what to do.”
He quickly showed the video to his wife, who immediately confronted the nurse about her misconduct. “I told her ‘I don’t want you to touch my child. You just slammed him,'” Saravia recalled of the heartbreaking incident. “She said ‘Oh no, if you think I mishandled him or anything, I’m sorry.'”
The family wants the hospital to change its closed-curtain policy
Savaria and Sinclair wasted no time reporting the nurse to hospital staff and higher-ups at the medical institution. Catholic Health, the company that runs Good Samarian, said they took “swift and immediate action” after learning about the nurse’s malpractice. They are also “conducting an investigation and consequently terminating the individual involved.”
“Additionally, we reported the individual to the Department of Health for further review. Keeping our patients safe remains our paramount concern,” officials from the hospitals added.
Reps from Good Samaritan said it was standard procedure to have the curtains closed in the neonatal ICU to protect the privacy of patients, but Sinclair and his wife are urging for the hospital to change the policy.
“There were a lot of babies in there and it made me feel like if that happened to Nikko who else did that happen to,” he said. “I find it messed up that in a room like that they have all the curtains closed.” The report also noted that there are no security cameras in the neonatal ICU.
Officials from the Department of Health said they were taking the “disturbing allegation seriously,” but would not comment further on the incident.
Thankfully, baby Nikko is at home, safe and healthy.
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