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Male Nurse's Exam of Female Psychiatric Patient Grounds For Firing, Court Says
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
Quick Summary: The male nurse missed the point of the anti-discrimination laws claiming that no female nurse was ever fired for doing a breast exam or a female patient. The court said the male nurse sexually abused his patient.
Breast exams were not part of the regular admission procedure for the psych unit.
The patient filed a complaint sixteen months later of sexual abuse by the male nurse who admitted her.
She said she allowed it only because she thought it was a regular part of the admission procedure.
SUPREME COURT OF NORTH DAKOTA, 1997. The female patient was a frequent voluntary admittee on the psych unit. The male nurse who admitted her at 3:00 a.m. knew she had been in before, but was not aware of her history of splitting and manipulating staff or of her prior allegations of sexual abuse.Checking off the routine admission health questionnaire, the nurse asked when she had her last breast exam and whether she did self-exams. The patient said she thought she had a lump and asked the nurse to perform a manual breast exam on her. The nurse complied. He would later claim he did this to relieve the patient’s anxiety.
The Supreme Court of North Dakota decided the facility acted properly in terminating this nurse for unprofessional conduct. His allegations of gender discrimination in employment were not well founded, the court ruled.
At a basic level, the court believed it was wholly inappropriate for a male nurse to perform a breast examination upon a female psychiatric patient. This particular nurse had a background in psych nursing. He had no background in oncology or any specific training in locating breast lumps, the court noted.
The court also implied in its opinion that a competent psych nurse is expected recognize when a psychiatric patient is acting out in a manipulative fashion. This nurse had this patient’s chart from her prior admissions and should have known his actions, in addition to being professionally inappropriate, were ripe to result in a legal claim against the facility from this patient.
The court recognized in general terms that a male nurse can sue for gender discrimination. To succeed with a lawsuit, the court said, a male nurse must identify specific instances where female nursing staff similar to him in all respects except gender were treated more favorably by the employer.
This nurse completely missed the point of the anti-discrimination laws by claiming that no female nurse was ever fired for doing a physical breast exam on a female patient, the court said.
The court said this male nurse had sexually abused his patient. Viewing his conduct in this light the court said he would have to prove the facility as a rule did not fire female nurses for sexual abuse of patients, to win with his allegations of gender discrimination. He gave the court no evidence that such a pattern of conduct by the employer ever existed, so his gender discrimination case had to fail, the court ruled.
Miller vs. Medical Center, 571 N.W. 2d 358 (N.D., 1997).