A nurse was fired after being caught on video allegedly mistreating a Latino baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, Long Island (NY).
“It was heartbreaking,” Consuelo Saravia, mother of the infant Nikko, told NBC News, “I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t even sleep.”
The baby was only two days old and under observation, because doctors administered antibiotics. His dad, Fidel Sinclair, went to see him and saw him crying through the nursery window. He then took a video of his newborn baby when he captured the unthinkable: a nurse appears to pick him up roughly, turn him over and slam him face-first into the crib.
“It was heartbreaking… I couldn’t stop crying, I couldn’t even sleep”
Consuelo Saravia, mother of the baby
“I don’t know, and it just broke me,” Sinclair said. “Not know what to do”. He showed the video to Saravia, who confronted the nurse.
“I told her, ‘I don’t want you touching my son! You just hit him,'” Saravia recalled of the conversation. “She said, ‘Oh no if you think I mistreated him or something, I’m sorry.'”
The Hispanic mother showed the video to the other nurses and administrators. Catholic Health, which runs the hospital, told NBC News that “upon learning of this incident, prompt and immediate action was taken, including conducting an investigation and consequently terminating the person involved. In addition, we informed the Department of Health for further review. Keeping our patients safe remains our primary concern.”
“There were a lot of babies in there, and it made me feel that if that had happened to Nikko, who else did that happen to?” questioned Sinclair, who also said, “It seems convoluted to me that in a room like that they would have all the curtains closed.”
But Sinclair claims he was lucky that the curtain was lifted enough to see his son and record what happened, and said there were no security cameras in the room.