‘I Own This Hospital!’: Black Nurse’s Contract Terminated After Exposing Doctor’s Disturbing Outburst In Viral Video
A nurse posted an audio recording that went viral on social media of a heated exchange between her and a doctor in which the doctor is heard screaming at her, telling her to “shut up,” and calling her a “dumb b—.”
Jessica Wingard, who posted the recording on her TikTok page @diamondtips4you, where it drew nearly three million views and tens of thousands of comments.
“Why are you screaming at me?” Wingard is heard asking in the recording.
“Because you guys do not care!” the doctor yells in response.
“Dr. Saddiqui,” the nurse is heard patiently saying. “There is a patient that needs to be assessed — “
“Would you just shut up?!” the doctor says repeatedly. “I have enough of this country! Don’t you have any sense?”
The exchange escalates as Wingard fires back at the doctor’s egregious and unprofessional conduct and attempts to explain the situation surrounding a hospital patient he’s asked to assess.
“Shut up, dumb b—!” the doctor shouts.
“No, you shut up! Don’t talk to me like that. I’m not your child. You should quit if you don’t want to do your job,” Wingard responds.
As the nurse continues to check his behavior and challenge his response when he’s asked to see the patient, the doctor grows even more enraged.
“You shouldn’t be a physician. You don’t own this hospital,” Wingard states.
“I own the hospital!” the doctor shouts repeatedly. “I own the hospital!”
Comments poured in on Diamond’s video from many users who praised her for exposing the doctor’s misconduct and encouraged her to report him to the state medical board.
Atlanta Black Star spoke with Wingard, who said the incident happened on April 27 at the BryLin Hospital in Buffalo, New York, where she was hired through a third-party agency to work as an overnight RN supervisor.
Her contract position began four months ago, and that’s when she started working with Dr. Saddiqui, the physician heard in the recording.
Wingard said that during her short stint with the hospital, she’s suffered the doctor’s fiery temper on previous occasions. This most recent exchange reached a boiling point when he started yelling at her after she asked him to assess a patient whose condition had changed overnight. She said another nurse initially requested his help, but he refused and yelled at her, then did the same to Wingard when she tried to follow up with him.
“He was screaming at the top of his lungs and as he continued to scream and yell, I reached in my pocket, and I pulled out my phone right in front of him and pulled up my voice recorder,” Wingard said.
Wingard said she ended up walking away from the doctor, and he eventually saw the patient, but she reported the outburst to the hospital’s director of nursing later that morning. The director told her that the hospital administration was aware of Saddiqui’s behavior and had made arrangements to replace him in the next couple of weeks, but Wingard was hoping for more immediate action.
After posting the recording on TikTok, where it garnered widespread attention, she heard from her agency directors, who notified her that her contract with the hospital would be terminated for violating the agency’s social media protocols. The agency still employs Wingard and says she has already received more contract offers to work at other facilities.
Wingard said that, to her knowledge, Saddiqui is still employed by the hospital, but her negative interaction with the physician is just one of several he has had with other staff members.
“The nurse who was there that particular night had been cursed out by him multiple times. It’s not new, it’s documented. They don’t even report it anymore because nothing happens. There are nurses who have quit altogether because of him,” Wingard said.
Wingard added that she believes there was a racial element that factored into the doctor’s tirade toward her and the other nurse on her shift.
“His God complex kicked in, and his disdain for Americans, let alone African-Americans and women, kicked in when he saw me. The nurse who called him first is African-American. Not to say he wouldn’t be disrespectful to a nurse of another race, especially if she was female, but I very much felt as though he was looking and talking to me like he was better than me because I was a Black woman,” Wingard said.
Wingard, a healthcare professional with 13 years of experience, said she launched her TikTok page as a platform that advocates for fair treatment of nurses. She posted the video not just to call attention to the doctor’s verbally abusive behavior, but also to raise awareness about the power imbalances between nurses and doctors and the protections doctors often receive from hospital administrations.
“A lot of times, people won’t speak up because they don’t wanna get fired, but when an institution is notified of such abuse and mistreatment and discrimination and still won’t do anything about it and won’t even take the initiative to provide you with a safe environment to work in, I think that’s totally unacceptable,” Wingard remarked.
She continued: “In their eyes, nurses come a dime a dozen, and physicians don’t and it can be hard to recruit doctors and there’s just a larger number of nurses, so you do find that when it comes to nurse versus physician, most administrations are gonna try to side with the doctor. I’ve never seen such disrespect as I experienced the other day. I’ve never been talked to like that.”
Diamond has reported the doctor to the state medical board in the hope of having his medical license revoked and plans to file legal action against the hospital for its negligence and refusal to reprimand the doctor for his misconduct.