A nurse practitioner at a Philadelphia-area pregnancy clinic captured in a now-viral TikTok video reportedly refused to provide a doctor’s note for her patient and questioned her family planning decisions during a visit.
“What were you thinking about when you got pregnant, that you’re not going to work?” the staffer can be heard asking, adding that telling the patient to take off from work would be considered “fraud.”
“I had three kids,” the practitioner said. “I worked up until the second they were born.”
“But am I you?” the patient responded. “Do you know how I feel?”
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After the patient stood up to show the staffer’s face in the video, the employee also threatened to call the police on the patient. The patient also accused the staffer of hitting her with a laptop case.
“Look how she’s hitting me,” the patient said to the camera.
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The video, taken at the Philly Pregnancy Center’s Norristown, Montgomery County, location, was uploaded under the username @goddess_jay_ this week. It has amassed over 178,000 views as of Thursday morning, with subsequent videos garnering nearly 200,000 views addressing the interaction.
"We at the Philly Pregnancy Center (“PPC”) have taken the recent uproar over the conduct of one of our contract nurse practitioners very seriously," reads a statement posted to the clinic's website. "The incident, her response and the entire matter is under investigation. We have never encountered anything like this. So, we are starting a top to bottom analysis of how we work with our patients to make sure we interact with each person in a medically and socially appropriate manner."
The patient’s lawyer, Briana Lynn Pearson, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the interaction is a striking example of racism in the medical industry which has historically affected the quality of care for women of color.
"Jill, an African American woman, went to the Philadelphia Pregnancy Center at seven months pregnant, in pain, seeking medical care and was met with abuse, neglect and discriminatory treatment because is African American," Pearson told the outlet.
