Cincinnati Medical Center, union spar over Facebook Live post

The University of Cincinnati Medical Center has fired one union representative and disciplined another over a Facebook Live video updating members on negotiations, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.  

Jennifer Donaldson, a labor and delivery nurse and vice president of the Registered Nurses Association, made the video April 18. She was subsequently fired.

The union's president, Michelle Thoman, who helped record the video, reportedly received a written warning after the video was posted.

Ms. Donaldson was fired for leaving her duties to make the video and lying about it, hospital officials told the Enquirer.

"After a lengthy investigation, we found that the nurse in question, working in labor and delivery at UC Medical Center, chose to leave her patients to go to a break room to film a live social-media video. This nurse did not perform the appropriate handoff of care and abandoned her responsibility to monitor the fetal heart rates of the patients in her care," UC Health spokeswoman Amanda Nageleisen told the newspaper.

"It was also determined that the nurse was not truthful about her failure to monitor these vulnerable patients," she added.

The union disputes the medical center's assertions. The RNA, a unit of the Ohio Nurses Association, said patients were not endangered during the making of the video and that Ms. Donaldson was on an allowed break at the time, The Enquirer reports.

Ms. Thoman was not on duty.

Tina Arrona, acting union vice president, told the newspaper the discipline was "a clear-cut case of hospital retaliation against nurses who are prominent and active in the union."

Union representatives reportedly have called for the reinstatement of Ms. Donaldson and for Ms. Thoman's disciplinary letter to be removed.

Read the full report here.

 

More articles on human capital and risk:

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Beaumont nurses accuse hospital administration of interfering with unionization

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