Nurse Gets Settlement for Refusing Illegal Sample
Salt Lake City has been focused on changing policies and procedures to make sure this never happens again.
11.2.2017
16
A Utah nurse who was arrested after refusing to take a blood sample from an unconscious patient has been awarded a $500,000 settlement from the city and her employer. Back in July nurse Alex Wubbels refused to take the blood sample from an unconscious patient for the police without a warrant and bodycam footage showed her being handled roughly by the police as she was handcuffed and shoved into a squad car. Salt Lake City and the University of Utah are each paying half of the settlement amount.
A spokesman for the Salt Lake City mayor said:
First and foremost, Salt Lake City has been focused on changing policies and procedures to make sure that this never happens again, and we are glad that we were able to come to a resolution with Nurse Wubbels.
The Salt Lake City police Detective who arrested the nurse, Jeff Payne, was fired from the police force and Lieutenant James Tracey, the watch commander at the time, was demoted. The patient has since died.
In a press conference, she said that she would use a portion of the funds to help people get body cam footage of themselves at no cost.
We all deserve to know the truth and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage and that’s what happened in my case. No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience that I went through.
As part of the settlement agreement, Wubbels will not pursue a lawsuit.
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