Back Injury: Nursing Caregiver's Employer's Duty of Reasonable Accommodation Defined
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Quick Summary: When a nurse has medical restrictions on lifting, bending or twisting and asks for reassignment to a unit where the patients require no lifting or other heavy physical care, and the employee is able to perform non-lifting patient-care duties or unit clerical duties, and the employer refuses to consider the employee for an available light duty assignment, the employee has grounds for a disability discrimination lawsuit based on failure to make reasonable accommodation to the employee’s disability.
It is not relevant to the employer’s duty of reasonable accommodation whether the employee’s back injury occurred on or off the job.
There was evidence that other patient-care personnel at this facility, with similar back-injury-related medical restrictions, had been given temporary light duty assignments in their own units or rotated to other units to provide them with light duty work, as a matter of routine practice.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, INDIANA, 1996.The Americans With Disabilities Act defines disability, for purposes of anti-discrimination law, as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of the individual.
According to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, a nursing caregiver whose particular job entails lifting and heavy physical care of patients dependent upon receiving such care will come within the legal definition of a disabled person if the caregiver sustains a back injury leading to documented medical restrictions on lifting, bending, twisting, etc., which prevent the caregiver from being able to care for the heavy-care patients with whom he or she had worked prior to sustaining the back injury.
It is not relevant to the employer's duty to provide reasonable accommodation whether the back injury occurred on or off the job.
If the caregiver has a medical release to return to work after a back injury with specific restrictions on lifting, bending or twisting, the caregiver is considered a qualified individual with a disability. A qualified individual with a disability, by definition, is a person who is entitled to reasonable accommodation from his or her employer to his or her disability.
The court ruled explicitly that when a nursing caregiver returns to work with specific medical restrictions on lifting, bending and twisting, from a back injury, and the employer has light duty work to offer in the employee's unit or in another unit, the employer's legal duty of reasonable accommodation is to offer light duty work for which the employee is qualified and able to perform within his or her medical restrictions, or face a potential lawsuit for disability discrimination.
Leslie vs. Nursing Home, 916 F. Supp. 879 (S.D. Ind., 1996).More references from nursinglaw.com
http://www.nursinglaw.com/backinjury.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/backinjury2.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/back-problem-disability-discrimination.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/lifting1.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/back-injury-patient-lift.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/lifting3.htm
http://www.nursinglaw.com/lifting4.htm