An emergency room doctor was suspended by her employers after a video of her mocking a patient went viral. Dr. Beth Keegstra working at El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, California was recorded cursing and making fun of a patient who was undergoing an anxiety attack. A contracted physician, Keegstra was seen arguing with the 20-year-old patient Samuel Bardwell. She kept asking him whether his illness was real or just a ploy to get narcotic pain relievers. She laughed at him when he said he couldn’t inhale on account of the anxiety attack: “He can’t inhale. Wow! He must be dead.”’Keegstra continued her sarcastic barrage on the youth by mocking him: “Are you dead, sir?”

At the beginning of the video, the doctor can be seen trying to make the patient sit up despite being repeatedly told he cannot. Paying no heed to what the patient was saying, she kept making light of his problems. At one point she looks straight at the patient and says, “I am sorry sir, but you are the least sick of all the people who are here, who are dying!” She even tries to physically intervene by pulling the patient’s hand, trying to make him sit up.

The patient’s father Donald Bardwell is seen arguing with the doctor saying that his son is not breathing normally and that his inhalation is laboured. She retorts by saying: “He’s not laboured in the least! He has an oxygen saturation that is 100 percent. He is breathing perfectly normally.”

She implies that the 20-year-old college sophomore who collapsed after basketball practice is simply trying to get his hands on painkilling narcotics. Keegstra incredulously cross-questioned the family, making light of the situation and even accused the patient of changing his story.

Samuel Bardwell is a college sophomore at West Valley College in Saratoga. He was on Klonopin, a medication meant to treat seizures and anxiety disorders but had recently run out of it. He had to be rushed to the hospital since he was showing signs of withdrawal.

The father-son duo had to wait three hours to get an appointment with the doctor who walked into the emergency room with a security guard, which the family felt was insulting. At that point, Bardwell asked his father to start recording. But what followed, evidently, was even worse. Watch the video here.

After being criticised on social media, El Camino Hospital pulled up the errant doctor and had her suspended. Terming her behaviour with the patient as “unprofessional,” the CEO of the hospital Dan Woods said that the doctor has been removed from work schedule and has apologised profusely for Keegstra’s misconduct.

Anxiety and panic attack patients have to be treated with utmost care. Yelling, screaming and misbehaving would only aggravate them, a fact Keegstra as a medical professional should have known in the first place. Instead of encouraging the patient to breathe, the doctor belittled him, throwing one sarcastic barb after another.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 20, 2018 11:11 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).