Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

December 1999       

  The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled a hospital fully complied with its legal duties as an employer under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and that a nurse’s aide had no grounds to sue for disability discrimination.

  The aide worked at the hospital for twenty-two years before developing a Bartholin’s cyst.  As it would turn out, the situation never got to the point where the court would have to rule whether that condition is a legally-defined disability or what accommodation would be reasonable.

  The unit nursing supervisor asked the aide for medical documentation when she first claimed she could not lift or pull heavy patients.  The aide got a short note from her gynecologist.  The supervisor gave the aide a physical capacities evaluation form for the gynecologist to complete, but he refused, apparently believing she was not unable to work.

  The supervisor sent her to the hospital’s occupational therapy department, where a nurse practitioner refused to document her disability, saying she would not complete the form because the aide was under a physician’s care.  The supervisor told the aide to go to her family physician, but he also refused to complete the form. 

  When the aide flatly refused to try to lift a particular patient without assistance, the supervisor on duty told her she had to perform her assignments as usual or be sent home.  She never returned after a three-day suspension.

  The court ruled the hospital fulfilled its duty to participate in the interactive process required of employers by the ADA, and the aide could not sue.  Tatum v. Hospital, 57 F. Supp. 2d 145 (E.D. Pa., 1999).