Five nurses at Denver Health Medical Center found out the hard way that there is no excuse for ogling a dead man’s private parts.
The nurses were suspended for three weeks after opening a body bag to conduct an inappropriate visual inspection of the dead patient’s genitals, Denver Health Medical Center spokesman Josh Rasmussen told CBS News.
The incident was reported to hospital authorities after one of the colleagues, who was not involved in the viewing, overheard one of the nurses commenting on the occurrence and felt that what they had done was grossly inappropriate. An internal investigation was conducted into the matter, resulting in the suspension, which will go into the personnel files of the nurses involved.
According to local news outlets, the suspended nurses had admired the size of the deceased patient’s genitals. A news report from the Denver Police said,
Multiple staff members viewed the victim while he was incapacitated, including after he was deceased.
It added, “The complainant, Risk Management for Denver Health, made a mandatory report.” The incident happened between March 31 and April 3.
A spokesman for the Denver District Attorney, Ken Lane, said that “there was insufficient evidence” to continue with criminal charges against the nurses involved, hence the lesser sentence of suspension from employment.
The hospital stated that the nurses were taken off their jobs for three weeks, but have since returned to work. One of the nurses is no longer employed at the hospital, but was not terminated due to the incident.
The names of the nurses or the medical unit involved were not released to the public, but hospital administrators have reportedly informed the dead man’s family members about what happened. “Denver Health is truly sorry this happened. This incident it is not an appropriate representation of the high-quality care and compassion our clinical staff strive to provide to our patients,” the hospital said in an email to the Daily Mail.
