Alex Wubbels, a nurse at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City, was arrested on July 26 for refusing the request of a police officer to draw blood from an unconscious patient.
Without consent or a warrant, the police officer, Salt Lake City Detective Jeff Payne, was not legally allowed to draw the patient’s blood. Regardless, Payne continued to demand Wubbles draw blood from the patient, and she continued to refuse, until he eventually grabbed her, handcuffed her, and dragged her away from the hospital, as she kicked and screamed for help.
The video of this incident went viral when it was released last week.
“Please sir, you are hurting me,” Wubbels can be heard crying out as Payne pushes her to his car.
Payne has since been put on paid administrative leave, according to the Salt Lake City Police Department.
Wubbels says she hopes that the video can help change the relationship between the police and hospitals.
"We need to make this better. This can't be happening, it should've never happened, and if I have anything to say about it, it won't ever happen again," she told Today.
“What that cop did was 100 percent indefensible,” said Art Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center, on Boston Public Radio Tuesday.
“You can’t go around pulling blood samples out of people who don’t give you their permission if you don’t have a warrant," said Caplan. "The nurse is right. The nurse is heroic. The nurse knows what she is talking about. I don’t know what the cop was thinking.”
Click above to hear the full interview with the Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center Art Caplan.
