Katie Duke, still nursing, still selfie-ing. (Via Instagram)
If you are really into summertime TV and/or gore, you might recognize Katie Duke from the ABC reality series NY Med, which follows Dr. Oz and the staffers of New York Presbyterian and Newark University Hospital as they save lives in really gross ways. Katie Duke was one of the IRL nurses on the show, until recently when the hospital fired her for an Instagram she posted.
(Screencap via NY Med)
Duke's Instagram post—or as she calls it on the show, "online social media post" (you gotta pay ABC if you want them to say your name on the air, Instagram!)—shows an empty trauma room after treating a man who had been hit by a subway. The caption reads "Man Vs 6Train... The After" followed by a bunch of hashtags.
96 likes?! Worth it! (Screencap via NY Med)
After seven years in the ER, Duke was fired by her supervisor at New York Presbyterian because it was felt that the post was insensitive.
Keep in mind, this is a hospital that signed off on having a camera crew aiming a lens at every bloody gash and screaming face brought through its doors. Hell, they're even cool with having Dr. Oz around. But Instagram is over the line? What if she'd simply tagged herself on Facebook, "at NY Presbo, saving asses again," would that be fire-able? (Answer: yeah, probs.)
This could be a case of old media fighting off the new, with ABC desperately struggling to keep their shit on the TV and not letting anything leak, even the slightest little tidbit.
But more likely, it's a matter of context, and this is just further proof that everything looks worse when it's online. Sandwich your pic of an ER aftermath in between your selfies and that pic of the perfect grapefruit you found at Whole Foods, and you look insensitive.
From now on, if you want to take pics at work, put them in a scrapbook and invite your 16K followers over to flip through in your living room. After all, isn't that the only way to test who your real followers are?
Katie Duke will probably be fine, given that she has a website with a merch page where you can buy water bottles and t-shirts bearing the slogan, "Deal With It," her catch-phrase, apparently. It's a mantra you have to embrace when working alongside Dr. Oz all day.
(by Bob Powers)