Teenagers sneaking around behind their parents’ backs is a tale as old as time. That said, not all of them have the guts to try to do it in a hospital bed.

OP works in marketing at a very nice, private hospital. According to her, most of the nurses who work there care about the patients but are also rule followers.

I used to work at a very nice private hospital where the place looked like a hotel, the food was great and the service unrivaled. We were voted best private hospital in the country quite a few times and all around, people were happy and the care was great.

The nurses were mostly old school, stern but very passionate about patient care, with no time for anything that stops them from doing their job.

Given how nice the hospital is, OP rarely had patient complaints. When she did, the nurses were quick to tell their side of the story.

My job was to focus on marketing and complaints, and tbh, I didn’t have a lot of work on the complaints side but every now and again something would come up.

If there was an incident, the RNs would usually come and warn me to expect something, and give their side of the story.

She arrived at work one day to find a nurse waiting for her. She had a story about a young teenage girl, there for minor surgery, and her boyfriend visiting the night before.

The girl was a fall risk so closely monitored, and when the nurses found a closed door, they had to intervene.

One morning, as I got to work, a RN was waiting at my door to update me on an incident the previous night.

There was a 18yo patient who had a small op, but was prone to dizziness and fainting. Now, slip and falls are a big thing in hospitals and these incidents get monitored very closely.

Since she was a slip and fall risk, they moved her to a private room right in front of the nurses station so that she can be monitored throughout the day and night.

One night, the ‘tattoo clad’ (older nurse’s description) 20 Something boyfriend comes to visit, and forgets that this is in fact a hospital and not a hotel. Old school, stern Nurse realised something is amiss when the room’s doors were closed and, after she pushed the door open, the curtains around the bed was drawn too.

Seeing the privacy takes second priority to a patient’s healing and safety in a hospital, old school nurse wasn’t having any of this.

She pulls the curtains open, pulls the boyfriend out of the hospital bed and gave them both a talking to. Tattoo boyfriend left soon afterwards, apparently furious that his evening was ruined.

OP found an email complaining about their “daughter’s” privacy being violated during a “conversation” with her boyfriend.

Sure enough, 2 hours after the nurse visited my office, I get a mail from patient’s ‘father’, detailing how his daughters privacy was invaded the previous night, how she had a private ‘conversation’ with her boyfriend, and how they were unfairly treated by a nurse.

Given that the guy didn’t even use a different email address, OP knew it wasn’t from her father.

I was surprised that an older gentleman would write an email to a hospital with so many spelling errors and complete lack of punctuation, but the email address, something like tattooguy@ Gmail was a total giveaway as to who the real author was.

The contact email on file was for the mother, so OP forwarded all of the correspondence there.

Now, technically, I was just able to reply on the email, detailing our experience and side of the story. However, sharing private patient information on an email to an unconfirmed email address is bound to get me in serious trouble.

So, I did what any sane, and perhaps, slightly malicious, person would do. I called document control and asked them to pull the email address on file for me. This happened to belong to her mom.

I forwarded the email to her, mentioning that I received the following email from her daughters father, but since she is the contact person on file and we need to stick with the people that we have permission to contact, may she be as kind as to share our response with him?

I then detailed what the nurse told me. About the patient being a slip and fall risk that requires constant monitoring, about the boyfriend visiting, about the door and curtain being closed, and the nurse catching them in the hospital bed together.

I apologised on behalf of the nurse for invading their privacy, but explained that open doors are protocol to ensure a patient’s safety, and our main priority is getting a patient safe, healthy and back at home as soon as possible.

I ended the mail with my contact details and invited her to contact me if she has any further questions.

The girl was on her best behavior and had no male visitors for the remainder of her stay.

Well, if the parents didn’t know about the incident, they knew now. I am told the daughter was well behaved for the remainder of the time, and the boyfriend didn’t stop by once during the rest of the patient’s stay.

So, lessons learnt: don’t include your parents details on your hospital file as your main contact details if you don’t want them contacted, don’t try and catfish a hospital employee and respect a hospital for what it is, a place of healing and not a hotel.

This is a good, old-fashioned story, so Reddit should love it.

Apparently this is a fairly common occurrence.

That’s definitely something you don’t tell your friends.

I would have called the police.

I think we know why she had trouble sleeping.

The stories in the comments made me ill.

Read them all at your own risk.