Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

June 2015 

  It stands to reason that every employee would want to work in a stress-free environment.

  However, if job-triggered stress were sufficient to require an employer to reassign the employee to another shift or location or supervisor, then the employee could dictate to the employer the job he or she will agree to perform or the conditions under which he or she will perform it.

  An employee is not limited in the major life activity of working if the employee’s medical restrictions only affect the employee’s ability to work a particular shift and not the broader ability to work in the employee’s particular occupation.

  An employee or prospective employee is entitled to legal protection as a disabled individual if the employee or prospective employee has a physical or mental condition that limits a major life activity.

  A major depressive disorder or clinical depression brought on by job stress can limit the major life activity of working.  However, this nurse is able to work in her profession except for early morning shifts. CALIFORNIA COURT OF APPEAL May 1, 2015

  A supervising nurse caring for inmates in the county jail began having medical problems including headaches, fatigue, dizziness, dehydration, neck, back and abdominal pain, loss of appetite, weight loss, nausea and vomiting.

  Her physician related her problems to work stress that compromised her emotional condition.  Her physical symptoms did not stem from any organic pathology but were related only to stress at work.

  Specifically, it was the stress of being present and working in the jail during the early morning hours of her 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. night shifts that triggered her physical symptoms and led to her psychiatric problems, the physician went on to say.

  As required by law, the nurse’s supervisors began a lengthy and extensive interactive communication process with the nurse to try to arrive at a reasonable accommodation that would meet the needs of both the nurse and her employer.

  The ongoing interactive communication process was documented for the nurse’s personnel records on an Interactive Process Worksheet.

  It was documented that the nurse was given temporary assignments to day shifts and then returned to her previous night shift when day shift assignments were not available. As the interactive communication process went forward notes from her physician as to her reactions to different trial assignments were retained for the file.

  In the end the nurse was terminated after she could not return to work at all pursuant to her physician’s instructions.

  The California Court of Appeal turned down the nurse’s disability discrimination lawsuit. 

  The disability she claimed was the inability to work in the jail where she was assigned during the early morning hours of a night shift.  That narrowly defined problem did not limit her overall ability to work as a nurse and thus it was not a legal disability. Safari v. County, 2015 WL 209169 (Cal. App., May 1, 2015).

More references from nursinglaw.com

http://www.nursinglaw.com/stress.htm

http://www.nursinglaw.com/stress-depression-nurse-occupational-disease.pdf

http://www.nursinglaw.com/stress-disability-discrimination-nurse.pdf

http://www.nursinglaw.com/nurse-disability-anxiety-depression.pdf