Nurse's Back Injury (On The Job): Reasonable Accommodation Not Required, Court Says

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

February 1997 

   Quick Summary: The Americans With Disabilities Act does not require a hospital to put aside its expectation that a clinical nurse be able to pull up, turn and ambulate patients and assist them with transfers and bathing, assuming that was part of the written job description before the nurse’s injury. That is not required as reasonable accommodation for an on-the-job back injury.

   An employer must be cautioned that it cannot fire an employee in retaliation for the employee filing a worker’s compensation claim and getting benefits due under the law. The employee can sue, but only if the employee can prove such retaliation was the motive for the firing.  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, TEXAS, 1996.

   There were charges of disability discrimination and retaliation in a suit filed by a clinical nurse in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, charges which the court dismissed as unfounded.

   An employer does not have to make an exception for a clinical nurse with a back injury, if her job description carries with it patient-care-related physical requirements that are an essential function of her job, the court ruled. Guneratne vs. Hospital, 943 F. Supp. 771 (S.D. Tex., 1996).

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