Nursing Student Sues After UofL Expels Her for Online Posts About Patients

“I like to piss people off, that is, up to the point till it backfires.”

---Nina Yoder

This from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

A former nursing student at the University of Louisville sued the institution in federal court [last week], alleging that it had violated her free-speech and due-process rights by expelling her for her posts on MySpace, where she wrote about her patients, gun rights, and abortion, among other issues.

The former student, Nina Yoder, says that an instructor summoned her to a meeting on February 27 where an associate dean suggested that she might have a gun, and security officers frisked her. The dean, citing concerns with Ms. Yoder’s MySpace blog, then told her she had been withdrawn from all courses and barred from the campus.

In a letter to Ms. Yoder, the nursing school said that she had violated its honor code by identifying herself as a student in “internet postings regarding patient activities.” The nursing school’s honor code holds students to “the highest standards of honesty, integrity, accountability, confidentiality, and professionalism” in “written work, spoken words, actions, and interactions with patients, families, peers, and faculty.” ...

...Before filing the lawsuit, Ms. Yoder had appealed her expulsion. The university denied the appeal....

...Ms. Yoder’s blog posts, which Internet searches don’t turn up but which she attached to her lawsuit, discuss anonymous patients’ cases. In one post, she mentions a 31-year-old woman who attempted suicide with an overdose of Tylenol, saying that she was “sucking up some valuable Nurse’s Aide time around the clock, so they can sit there and listen to some more of her ‘boo hoo poor me.’”

Another post describes Ms. Yoder’s anti-abortion views and patients’ surprise when they discover that they’re pregnant. “We get Virgin Marys by the bundle at the clinic each day,” the post says. “Then they go and surgically expel the unwanted fetus out of their body, unaware that it may be the next Jesus they’re dumping into the biohazard bin.” ...