Nurse fired after posting photos on social media of infant born with birth defect — and allegedly mocking baby

A neonatal intensive care nurse who posted photos on social media of an infant born with a birth defect — and allegedly mocked the baby — has been fired, WFOR-TV reported.

What are the details?

Sierra Samuels at first was placed on administrative leave from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami after she shared the images of the infant on her social media account, the station said.

The caption of the first image read, "My night was going great then boom!" WFOR said, adding that the caption of the second image read, "Your intestines posed [sic] to be inside not outside baby" and was followed by "#gastroschisis." The station showed only the photo caption text.

WFOR said gastroschisis is a birth defect of the belly in which the baby's intestines are exposed. The station's video report accompanying its initial story indicates that the survivability rate of gastroschisis is 90%.

WFOR's initial story about the incident ran in early September; the station's follow-up about the nurse's firing ran Monday. It isn't clear exactly when the nurse posted the images or when she was fired.

More from the station:

Jackson Health System said all its employees go through privacy policy training on a regular basis. It said any potential privacy breach is taken seriously.

A statement from a Jackson Health System representative read, in part, "Employees who violate these privacy rules, despite being educated, are subject to disciplinary action including suspension or termination. As soon as we learned of this potential breach, we immediately placed this employee under administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation."

Samuels had been with Jackson since 2016.

Jackson Health added to the station that the parent was notified of the breach.

'Certain expectation of privacy'

A Miami litigation attorney told WFOR in its initial story that patient privacy is expected.

"In addition to ... the general HIPAA violation that we'd be looking at here, there's a sense of decency about the rights and expectations we all have in our likenesses and our images," David Weinstein explained to the station.

Weinstein added to WFOR that "with images, you have a certain expectation of privacy, that if you're in an area ... you believe to be private and in this case a hospital, even more so."

Jackson Hospital Fires Nurse For Posting Disturbing Photos, Captions Of NICU Baby On Social Media