Discussion: Lawsuit: Students Forced to Undergo Practice Transvaginal Ultrasounds

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Discussion for article #236570

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Inside The Lawsuit Claiming Transvaginal Ultrasounds Were Forced on Students

Deep inside?

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“Inside The Lawsuit Claiming Transvaginal Ultrasounds Were Forced on Students”

Is this article intended as a trans-lawsuit probe?

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Alrighty then! I agreed with comments to yesterday’s story that medical training programs often had students practice procedures on one another for good reasons, and that Valencia College seemed to be a responsible institution. However, after reading this update, I change my opinion. If the alleged complaints are true, then this particular sonogram program is way off the reservation! Good luck and good lawyering to the plaintiffs!

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“conspired to have students petition” the school to bring back the practice

Uh oh. Is there a petition?

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So you think sexual violation of women is something to make jokes about?

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I’ve run the debate team at a major university for nearly two decades. I’ve found that giving a student a transvaginal ultrasound during debate helps keep the student more focused and alert. We’ve found the same when we do this on female students, too.

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You think?

This wasn’t just off the reservation. They were running a freaking peep and touch show, if these allegations are true.

“The lawsuit further alleged that insertion of the transducer sometimes required plaintiffs to be sexually stimulated by other students,”

I mean…WTF?? What medical procedure requires the medical practitioner to sexually stimulate the patient??

“Ball, the program chair, called a student “sexy” and suggested she could be an “escort girl” while she was undergoing the procedure.”

I think someone seriously misunderstands what bed side manner actually means.

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I hope Valencia College’s checks have room for lots of extra zeros in the $ section.

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Initially, I thought maybe I could see both sides to this argument. But, after having read THIS:

The lawsuit further alleged that insertion of the transducer sometimes
required plaintiffs to be sexually stimulated by other students, the
suit said, and plaintiffs experienced “discomfort and embarrassment each time they had to endure this forced probing of their sexual organs."

It almost sounds as if the female students were close to beingsodomized than anything else.

EDIT TO ADD; In the interest of full disclosure, due to having many uterine fibroid tumors and ovarian cysts, I’ve had both pelvic sonograms and transvaginal ultrasounds done on my person. They were done by both men and women. I have never EVER had these technicians touch me in a manner that would suggest I was being physically stimulated. This just sounds like a horrible place and I hope the Plaintiffs wring every dollar out of this “school.”

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Umm… I used to design medical ultrasound transducers and I have two patents in that area. I never worked on the “TV” probes, but my colleagues did.

I don’t EVER recall anyone saying that patients needed to be stimulated in any way before an exam. Lubrication, yes, of course, and if I recall correctly these devices could be used with a disposable sterile sheath.

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I remain stunned that the so-called instructors didn’t think there was anything wrong about coercing people to undergo a procedure. Yes, as many have pointed out, students practice on each other, but do so willingly.

There’s something deeply wrong with this program.

Hope the plaintiffs are wildly successful in this lawsuit. And I hope that if this program is accredited, the accrediting body looks very carefully at Valencia.

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Why didn’t the defendants volunteer to be the students’ subjects?

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‘Your C.V. says you have a full diploma from Valenzuela Tech. I don’t recall that institution, could you show me your certificate? … This is a diploma from Valencia College with crayon scribbling all over the words Valencia College and someone’s hand-printed the words “Valenzuela Tech” in the margin with a felt marker.’

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Let a fellow student conduct an “invasive” transvaginal ultrasound on you while your teacher calls you “sexy” and suggests you should be an “escort girl,” or be “blacklisted” from working at local hospitals.

Good for them to sue, but I hope they go to the local prosecutor. This had nothing to do with getting an education, these young women were sexually assaulted.

The professor is nothing but a pervert who enlists others to do the dirty work while he stands there leering lecherously making sexual comments.

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They even coached them how to disparage the women trying to get abortions?

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While she stands there…Wonder why she didn’t volunteer to serve as the “patient”.

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You often see cases where sexually abusive behavior by people with power within an organization becomes normalized through a lack of investigation or accountability. It’s how the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church snowballed into the global horror it became. Eventually, after years of getting away with it, the actors come to believe it’s both normal and above reproach, or at least a thing the actor expects to get away with forever. And then, finally, when someone from outside the corrupt system finally comes calling–be it the cops or a plaintiff’s lawyer or a journalist–you see the same thing. The enablers–the people who looked away or rationalized for years to the point of inducing a form of willful blindness–always start with a reflexive defense of the propriety of the actors. Then, because they’ve all but poked their own eyes out to avoid seeing what they didn’t want to see, it only slowly dawns on them how truly bad the thing they tolerated and enabled to the point of thinking it’s not very bad, after all, really, looks from the outside.

The last stage–full understanding of how absolutely awful and evil the conduct in question truly was comes even more slowly and seems to take years.

This is just the Penn State story writ a bit smaller.

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I am beyond speechless. Even a non-attorney with little or no medical training should know that this program is so over the top that it is a sure bet for a massive lawsuit.

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The joke was at the expense of the very poorly thought out original title of the article. But please continue with your outrage.

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