Nurses being fired for having a disability

ktwlpn, LPN · Nov 9, 2000

Originally posted by kkuvasz:
I was wondering if anyone has or is having
the experience of being fired for having a
disability.If so who was the employer?

I saw this happen several years ago while working in the county run long term care facility.I worked with a nurse with seizures..concessions were made in her assignment(always worked on a large unit with a team of nurses-never left alone in a patient care area)

It was so bad that we would sit down for shift report and someone would say "there goes Pat" --our supervisors absolutely refused to assist us so we would carry her to a pt's bed and call her husband to come and get her..I think that she was forced to quit-not outright fired...where ever she is I hope her seizures are better controlled...

JenMarie · Nov 9, 2000

I had a friend who was a couple of years into nursing school when one of the nurses at a clinical placement that she was at made a complaint about her disability. She has cerebral palsy. She functions quite well...is able to drive a car etc, but she can be a little unsteady. Apparently she was forced to withdraw from the course.

After 10 years she is still quite bitter about it as she wanted to be a psych nurse where the skills such as mixing antibiotics and things that require an ultra steady hand are not paramount. After many years of doing poorly paid jobs she is now about to qualify to be a social worker.

Jay-Jay, RN · Nov 10, 2000

Good for her! I had a good friend who was diabetic, renal transplant, etc., etc! She was forced to give up nursing after she suffered an M.I. at the age of 49. She became an ordained minister instead.

I had the experience of nearly being washed out of nsg. school due to a hearing impairment. The instructor for clinical kept insisting I wasn't capable of doing a proper BP or chest assessment. Did she ever actually check me out on these procedures?? NOOO! I checked myself out on BP's and found my readings were the same as my classmates/other nurses.

We went to our lawyer, which was very embarrassing for the college, as he was a past member of their Board of Directors, and we also went to an advocacy group for the handicapped. They both said we had good grounds to sue, and would be very glad to take the matter to court!

The college hastened to make things right. My evauluation was reviewed by myself,(I found all sorts of omissions and outright lies, which I corrected) and by two other instructors, both of whom gave me a pass, (whereas the clinical teacher had not). The following year, the college set up an advocacy office for special needs students on campus. They also installed a whole bank of phones with volume boosters on them, where as previously, they'd had only one, and it didn't even work. This made it very difficult for me to make phone calls from the campus, and I complained about this situation several times, both to the campus and to Bell Canada. I'm sure the problems I experienced had something to do with these sudden changes.

I had no more problems due to my handicap after that. I am now nursing in the homecare field, which requires a lot of work on the telephone, and, for the most part, I have no problems being able to hear voicemail messages on the phone. The point of my story is: YOU'VE GOT TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF! I am a rather shy person, not at all a shit-disturber, and this was very difficult for me to do, but I never would have got my RN if I hadn't learned! My husband is a lot more outgoing and vocal than I am, and he helped A LOT with all of this.

I was not the only one to have problems with this instructor. She treated several other students so badly that they quit her clinical group. At one point, I had a delegation of students organized to go and complain to the co-ordinator about her. WHEN MONDAY MORNING ROLLED AROUND, THEY ALL CHICKENED OUT!! What wimps we nurses are! No wonder things are so bad in our profession right now. We have GOT to learn to stand up for ourselves...that's what the MIllion Nurse March is all about! Hope to see you there.