A nurse and content creator created a viral video about patients who pretend to be sick. But rather than laugh along with her, Twitter users made an entire hashtag about how wrong she is: #PatientsAreNotFaking.
In Danyelle Rose’s video, a patient (played by Danyelle) coughs and is short of breath. The nurse (also played by Danyelle) dances to the beat of the patient’s strained breathing. The caption: “We know when y’all are faking.”
Twitter users were not happy about the video, which implies that patients regularly fake symptoms just to… Get attention from hospital staff? It’s unclear.
https://twitter.com/DamnDRoseTweets/status/1196804341753139200
In a world where countless patients — especially women of color — experience harm because doctors and nurses don’t take their symptoms seriously, the video is especially offensive.
Many people immediately replied to Danyelle’s video with stories of not being believed by health professionals.
“I swear this was my labor and delivery nurse at @OUMedicine Children’s hospital when I told her I felt like I needed to push and she said I was ‘overexaggerating’ and 3 min later I had my baby NATURALLY without an epidural like I requested because she felt as if I was ‘FAKING,'” one user wrote.
“I had several white doctors/nurses think I was faking some serious mofo pain, because they assumed I wanted drugs,” another woman, Joy Henderson, wrote. “Turns out I had an ovarian cyst burst. Not a giant emergency, but easily pain worse than childbirth (I have three kids).”
Here are a few more:
https://twitter.com/DisabledPlumbob/status/1197508529046925312
https://twitter.com/keybindcowboy/status/1206306451263754240
https://twitter.com/disabilisaur/status/1197545495952015361
The hashtag #PatientsAreNotFaking draws attention to all of these concerns. Because yes, patients are not faking — and it’s dangerous to assume that they are.
