Utah Nurse Arrested For Doing Her Job And Protecting A Patient

There’s a video making the rounds on social media, showing a cop arresting Utah nurse Alex Wubbels after she refused to hand over a patient’s blood to cops. I should note, she didn’t do anything wrong. The cops didn’t have a warrant, and the patient in question was unconscious.

Wubbels, a former Olympic skier, was working as the charge nurse in the hospital’s burn unit the night of July 26 when veteran Salt Lake City Police Det. Jeff Payne came in to get vials of blood from a patient.

 

The patient, a male truck driver, had been brought in unconscious earlier after crashing head on with another driver who swerved into oncoming traffic while fleeing from police.

 

But because the truck driver was not a suspect in the crash, and likely wouldn’t face charges, Payne didn’t have probable cause or a warrant to take the blood from the patient, who was in a coma.

This is hard to watch.

WATCH: Shocking footage shows a Utah nurse being arrested for refusing to give a patient’s blood to police pic.twitter.com/tVcc2WUBoi

— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 1, 2017

Wubbels calmly explained the situation to Payne, but he didn’t listen and acted out.

‘She’s going to jail,’ Payne says.
 

‘Why?’ a hospital staff member asks.
 
‘Interfering with a criminal investigation,’ Payne replies.

Wubbels isn’t planning to sue, but she released the video to make a point. She doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.

‘I think right now, I believe in the goodness of society. I want to see people do the right thing first and I want to see this be a civil discourse. And if that’s not something that’s going to happen and there is refusal to acknowledge the need for growth and the need for re-education, then we will likely be forced to take that type of step. But people need to know that this is out there,’ she told the Deseret News.
 

‘The only job I have as a nurse is to keep my patients safe. A blood draw – it gets thrown around there like it’s some simple thing – but blood is your blood, it’s your property,’ Wubbels told the Today show.

All in favor of Payne losing his job? *raises both hands and a foot*

h/t Daily Mail