March 29, 2024

Swiss healthcare worker posts images of corpse on Facebook

An unidentified aged care worker in Switzerland has been charged after posting pictures on Facebook sitting next to the corpse of an old woman.

In a lurid example of the violation of patient privacy, an unidentified aged care worker in Switzerland has been charged after posting pictures on Facebook sitting next to the corpse of an old woman. Police may charge her with disturbing the peace of the dead, a crime carrying up to three years in prison.

The images, accompanied by off-colour comments, showed a woman in a nurse’s uniform laughing and posing at the bedside. The pictures had been taken at a nursing home in the town of Mogelsberg in January 2012. The home was later closed for unrelated reasons.

Other images on the Facebook page suggested that the woman, an immigrant worker from the Philippines married to a Swiss man, was linked to Satanism and sado-masochism. She may have been a cook, rather than a nurse.

The woman told a Swiss magazine Blick that “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone or show a lack of respect”. She explained that she simply wanted to show a friend in the Philippines the realities of life and death in Switzerland.

The Swiss national nurses’ federation said that the incident illustrated its concerns about the Swiss healthcare sector. “To be able to prevent the repeat of such a case, there is a desperate need for an active professional register and attractive working conditions to counteract the acute shortage of staff,” it said. “Whether this was a qualified nurse, a professional carer or a simple assistant, it is clear that people like this should not be in the health sector.”

Michael Cook
Creative commons
privacy
Switzerland