Doctor 'graffiti's' patient's face during surgery

A former nurse is suing a South Carolina hospital for breach of privacy after an anesthetist decorated her face with novelty stickers while she was undergoing surgery.

According to a law suit filed by thirty-six-year-old Veronica Valdez, Dr. Patrick Yang of Torrance Memorial Medical Center used adhesive stickers to give her a black mustache and teardrops under her left eye during finger surgery in 2011.

Nurses's aide Patricia Gomez reportedly photographed the incident.

‘I felt violated. I was in shock,’ Valdez said in court documents.

Valdez and Yang knew each other at the time of the surgery, as Valdez had worked at the hospital thirteen years earlier.

In his deposition, Dr. Yang detailed how he cut out and coloured in the stickers before placing them on Valdez's face near the end of the hour-long surgical procedure.

‘I thought she would think this is funny and she would appreciate it,’ he said.

Hospital officials reported the incident to authorities as a potential violation of medical privacy.

Although Gomez admitted taking the photo of Valdez, she claims she did not post it anywhere and deleted it shortly after.

Others have testified seeing a photo of Valdez in surgery on Facebook.

Torrance Memorial accepted responsibility for the incident, saying this "breach of professionalism regrettably did occur" and that those involved "demonstrated poor judgment".

In response to the law suit and state investigation, Yang was suspended for two weeks while Gomez and two other employees were also suspended for a brief time.

Although staff also received extra training on privacy, no one involved in the incident was fired.