Felner cronies apparently can’t stop with the spin.

And this is a bullshit-free zone.

Really, you haven’t debunked me on anything. HIPAA wasn’t cited as a reason for her dismissal. Nothing specific was. And UofL refuses to say why she was dismissed and refuses to show up in court– just pushing things back further and further.

And from September 2008 to current, there are 90+ comments from northstate.net / IP range of 198.86.109*. And more than 40 comments from various IP ranges at Guilford Technical Community College and the North Carolina Research and Education Network.

I’d love to see a list of posts under what ever handle you think I’m using. So please, jake. Prove it to me.

My internet handles are Panacea and Theala (which you can get from my email address). That’s it. I used your search engine to look for anything posts I might have made and forgotten about (I post on lots of sites on lots of stories that interest me). It turns up my posts as Panacea. Nothing under Theala.

But you are right about one thing. I am from North Carolina. If you go to http://www.news-record.com you’ll find lots of posts from me there as Panacea. Theala, mostly gaming sites tho I do post as Theala on Nurse Link. Google Theala Sildorian. You’ll find a link to an old web page I no longer maintain (my Champions! website). Hopefully that will assure you of who I am, and that I am not one of these other two people you refer to (but haven’t named).

I have no idea who Robert Felner is. Guess I’d better Google him.

You speak of “reporting stories.” That’s what journalists do. So I believed you adhere to some sort of journalistic standard. I stand corrected. You’re not a journalist.

You claim to have debunked me, I claim to have debunked you. You’ve never addressed the issue of bringing a camera into a hospital and taking pictures as a HIPAA violation. You clearly don’t understand how nurses view their profession and that we take professional issues very seriously.

It’s sad in this day and age to think that people can trash the profession they are going into, yet not have to take accountability for it. Florence Nightingale is spinning like a top in her grave.

I’m not a journalist. (I can prove you’ve visited this site tons of times before this story, fyi) I don’t strive for anything journalistic and never have in the two years I’ve been running this site.

There are two individuals commenting here, on this story, from the Carolinas. And both of you have said positive things about Robert Felner on multiple occasions.

There is enough information to identify, though it is not directly on her blog. She took PHOTOGRAPHS. People can and are identifiable from their photographs. The issue for U of L was not that a patient had been publicly identified, but that she took identifiable information (photographs) out of the hospital and then made denigrating statements about her patient on the Internet.

Honor codes are about character. Nursing is about seeing and treating people for who they are, without being judgmental about their circumstances or the nature of their health problems.

We can have our private opinions, but the nursing code of professionalism limits how we can express them.

We teach this from day one in every nursing program nationwide.

Nursing is a calling. It is not a “job,” in the sense that working at the GM factory is a job. Nurses are supposed to commit themselves to the improvement of their communities–this is the way we’ve been doing it since Florence Nightingale modernized nursing in the 1850′s.

You have to understand, people’s lives and well being are at stake here. If a nurse is not committed to what she is doing, she puts patient safety at risk.

As an instructor, I have a duty to protect the public from unsafe nurses. I fulfill that duty by holding students to high standards. That doesn’t mean there aren’t incompetent nurses out there.

As an instructor, my role is to prepare my students to become entry level (beginner) nurses. I want my students to succeed, and work hard to help them be successful. I have no doubt the School of Nursing at U of L does the same thing.

However, if a student is unable to perform to academic standard, or if her behavior demonstrates an unfitness to be a nurse (by violating college/hospital rules), then I have a duty to the public to not allow that student to progress.

marie says, “And how productive, really, is the very hard line? Nina Yoder invested time, work, money. Don’t forget, this is someone’s life and future; the student’s and her dependent’s.”

It’s not my concern how much time, effort, or money the student has put into her schooling if she is unfit to be a nurse. My concern is the safety of the public at large.

Now I don’t know anything about the U of L other than I’ve found no public statements from them on this issue, and I didn’t expect to find any. They can’t comment on this issue, therefore we don’t know their side of things, only what Yoder has claimed, and the documentation she provided.

Some here seem to view the U of L’s actions in the worst possible light until proven otherwise. Since I don’t live in KY, I can’t comment on that. I just know I don’t know their side of the story and won’t unless this moves into the courts. So people here are getting very defensive of Yoder but can’t claim to know the whole story.

I am basing my judgments on what I have seen of her direct actions (the blog), and the letter from her University. Because that’s all I have to go on. And it doesn’t look good for her.

The whole gun thing–I don’t know what’s going on there. The dismissal letter didn’t mention it, so I can only conclude the University decided it didn’t have enough evidence to prove whatever allegation was made. I doubt the University made the allegation up–it didn’t need to. There was plenty to dismiss her on as it was.

jake: you’ve made it crystal clear that you are not interested in viewing any opinion other than your own. I posted here because the conversation seemed very one sided, and I hoped to help people understand how seriously nursing takes its responsibilities.

I don’t know if I’ve managed to get anyone to see the broader picture from a nurse’s perspective, but I hope some of the seed has not fallen on barren ground.

However, I’ve taken this as far as I can–either people will understand what I’m saying or they won’t. So I doubt I’ll post here again.

But I would like to make one final statement, one that has nothing to do with Yoder.

jake, I was saddened to see your threat to close comments on this threat.

jake stated, “Do I need to shut down comments on this story or are you couple of folks in the Carolinas going to continue spewing bullshit 24/7?”

I don’t know for sure if jake was referring to me or not: I am in North Carolina (he may have gotten that from my email domain). I have no idea who this Felner fellow is, and I have never posted on this site before this thread. So maybe he was referring to other people.

But jake, it disappoints me that you would close down a thread simply because people don’t agree with your point of view. A journalist should be open minded and free of bias. Of course no one can be completely bias free, but a journalist should strive for it.

Do you really think that a site such as this should simply be a chorus to your Hallelujah?

I hope not.

As far as ethics, the School of Nursing’s ethical duty toward the patients far outweigh any duty toward Yoder. She should have understood this.

Note that I’ve never said what she wrote/said/did was acceptable. I’m not even her attorney has said as much. I just think it’s important to stick to the law and the rules at places like UofL as they’re written. And it appears to me that Yoder got dicked over by UofL merely because she’s got a screw loose.

Now here is where I may agree with you. What is not clear to me how much due process she was afforded. If I am following this right, she had a hearing, but it was called off by the university. This is a public institution correct? If it were private then due process is a non issue. I think that was stupid on their part. She deserves her hearing. You guys are more familiar with the university than I so I don’t know how they operate.
What I will say is this: as a nurse I can state her conduct is unbecoming and as it stands right now I think she is on weak ground. I think she might win on the due process thing, but be careful what you wish for, she might just get her due process, and end up right where she started: defending her racist, unprofessional comments that demeans herself, current nursing students, and working/professional nurses.

As far as HIPAA, we shall have to agree to disagree. I feel there is enough info there to identify. You don’t see it that way. About as far as I am willing to meet you is that, again, I feel it is highly unlikely that anyone who cares/is related to the patients she discusses are highly unlikely to be reading her posts. For what its worth.

Why don’t you call her attorney, Dan, as I have done? Then try calling UofL, as I have done?

No one can say, for certain, why she was expelled. No one involved.

Her blog (singular, she only has one– which contains multiple posts) is, indeed, vile and ridiculous. And, no, her blog doesn’t give away “enough information” for Joe Blow on the street to determine who she’s talking about.

I’ve received training from Humana, the VA, M.D. Anderson, American Cancer Society, CMS. Beginning in 1999. The most recent at M.D. Anderson in 2008.