Disability Discrimination: Employer Must Engage In An Interactive Communication Process.
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
January 2015
The nurse asked her supervisor for help with the computer so she could work in the office even with the meds she was now taking for her epilepsy.
Her supervisor kept silent and walked away. That could be seen as a failure to engage in an interactive communication process with an employee who was reaching out for reasonable accommodation. UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FIFTH CIRCUIT December 11, 2014
A home health nurse was terminated after a grand mal epileptic seizure. A history of grand mal seizure meant she could no longer drive to appointments with her clients. She had been going out to see six to eight patients in the field every day.
She tried to adjust to her supervisors’ expectations for an administrative position in the office, but that did not work out. She filed a complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Com-mission, which filed suit on the nurse’s behalf against her former employer. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Mississippi) ruled the nurse was disabled, but with a history of grand mal seizure she was not qualified for a job which involved driving.
Nevertheless, a disabled employee may still have the right to reasonable accommodation to become qualified for the same or a comparable job. Along with a disabled employee’s right to reasonable accommodation comes the employer’s responsibility to engage in an interactive communication process with a disabled individual who reaches out to the employer for reasonable accommodation.
The nurse asked her supervisor for help learning the computer programs and remembering the computer passwords so that she could meet her employer’s expectations for an administrative position in the office which required no driving, given that she was affected by her epilepsy meds. According to the Court, she was ignored. E.E.O.C. v. Home Care, __ F. 3d __, 2014 WL 7003776 (5th Cir., December 11, 2014).
More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/interactive-process.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/disability-discrimination-nurses-claim.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/disability-accommodtion.pdf
http://www.nursinglaw.com/disability-new-position.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/nurse-disability-job-description.htm