Home health nurse claims she was racially profiled by officer looking for 'suspicious' person taking care of patient

A black home health nurse is accusing a Williamson County (Tenn.) sheriff‘s deputy of racial profiling after an incident she experienced inside of a patient’s home.

Stephanie Dash, a nurse with Amedisys Home Health Nashville, recounted her experience on social media with a deputy in Franklin, Tenn., on Wednesday, claiming that the female deputy continued to question why Dash was present despite both Dash’s patient and her boss confirming her identity.

Dash, who has been a nurse for three years and has worked in home health for one year, says that she has never experienced anything like this.

“I’m providing care doing my assessment when I notice … someone peeping in [the patient’s] window and knocking on the door,” Dash wrote. Dash, who had only been in the residence for 10 minutes, let her patient know that someone was at the door and if she would like her to answer. When the patient, who she refers to as “Jane Doe,” said yes, Dash opened the door to a sheriff’s deputy and another man who wasn’t an officer.

The deputy asked where Jane Doe was and Dash informed her that she was in the living room and continued to talk to her patient. Dash claims she was interrupted by the officer, who asked the patient who Dash was and that the police received a call saying “someone looked suspicious in the neighborhood.”

According to Dash, her patient confirmed twice that Dash was her home health nurse. On top of that, Dash was equipped with her work bag, which displayed her company’s logo, and wore scrubs and a stethoscope. Dash provided the deputy with her ID and eventually calls her company, requesting her boss.

“With the phone on speaker, my boss immediately asked are yall saying she looked suspicious because she’s black,” Dash wrote on Facebook. “The sheriff says no, I just wanted to know what she was doing in the neighborhood, my boss replied ‘well she’s one of my best nurses and she’s out giving back to the community and providing care to people so they can continue to live at home and avoid being put back in the hospital, and she has every right to do that.’ [She] again confirmed who I was.”

The deputy allegedly continued to ask the patient if the nurse was allowed to be there. Dash, meanwhile, packed up her things in an attempt to leave, as she had eight other patients to see. The deputy, according to Dash, refused to move her car to let her leave.

“Not only did you interrupt my patient care that she needed more than once, you also delayed me from getting to other patients,” Dash wrote. “[You] wanted me to be a criminal, you didn’t want me to be a nurse and you definitely did not want me in that neighborhood.” Eventually, after what Dash claims was 5 minutes, the deputy moved her car and Dash left the neighborhood. 

“The company she works for has filed a report,” Williamson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sharon Puckett told the Tennessean. “We are investigating and working to determine if there is audio or video from the call. The deputy was answering a suspicious person call after someone in the neighborhood reported seeing someone going from house to house.”

The patient, according to Dash, usually sees a white nurse. “If one nurse gets booked, we help each other out,” Dash told the news outlet. Dash added that during all of the at-home visits by the patient’s usual white nurse, she has never once had the police called on her.