“Guess the substance!”: Urgent care staff fired for video making fun of patient bodily fluids

Workers at a California urgent care clinic lost their jobs after posing in a TikTok video laughing at bodily fluids left behind by patients. The slideshow consisted of photos with staff from the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara smiling next to wet spots left on the sterile paper covering exam tables.

Doctors and nurses mocking patients on TikTok

The TikTok video, originally posted by @angieuncut (now set to private), included six photos in a slideshow. The first was an innocuous group shot of workers in scrubs with a caption asking, “Are patients allowed to leave you guys gifts?”

The next five had healthcare professionals posing, pointing, and making silly faces next to wet spots left on the exam tables. Captions continued, “yes, and we love them so much, all shades and opacities, make sure to leave your healthcare workers sweet gifts like these!”

@kelsey.bartley Oops! Did you try to delete this? @angieuncut #sansum #meangirls ♬ Blue Danube Waltz – London Symphony Orchestra

The video description read, “Guess the substance!”

Discourse around healthcare workers talking about their patients on social media, including making fun of them, has been a thing for years. The folks at Sansum, however, found the line. Fellow TikTokers stitched and downloaded the video before the OP could delete it, and the outrage soon reached the bosses.

On Tuesday, Sutter Health posted a message on Instagram addressing the video, claiming that it took immediate action to review what happened.

“The individual who posted the content is a former employee and was not employed with us at the time of the post,” the company stressed. “Any other staff shown are part of our internal investigation and are on administrative leave pending the results.”

A spokesperson told local news outlet KTLA 5 on Wednesday that Sutter fired them all.

“Morally & ethically repugnant”

Though social media has been the place to make fun of everyone since its creation, people have very little patience when healthcare workers do it to the folks they should be caring for. In 2019, nurse Danyelle Rose drew ire for imitating patients she accused of “faking it.”

The prevailing opinion is still, clearly, that this type of behavior is unacceptable.

On X, ER doctor Josh Trebach wrote that “if you post a video on social media making fun of your patients body fluids you deserve to be fired and never see patients ever again.”

“When I was nursing, we tried to NEVER let the patient see their OWN fluids… it was part of keeping their dignity intact,” said @TexasPatriot_27. “To put it on TT for the world to see is morally & ethically repugnant.”

On the Reddit forum r/TikTokCringe, people worried about what this will do to those who are already nervous about going to the doctor.

“Great. Thanks for setting health checks back a decade,” joked u/InterestingWin3627. “F*cking idiots.”

“This is horrible. Even if it were a joke,” wrote u/Imstilllost2024. “Imagine people who struggle with social anxiety seeing this and never going in for a check up again because of watching this.”