RN and being colorblind/deficient

[portugeehammer87]

I am a new grad and have been getting mixed reviews on being a RN and being color DEFICIENT. In short I see colors but fail when taking a colorblind test. I know and worked with many color deficient nurses. My question is: if you were in fact offered a job and then they found out you are color blind, can they deny the job to you? Or is that discrimination?

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

In the USA, you cannot be denied employment because of a disability as long as your disability doesn't affect your ability to do the job. Look up the Americans with Disabilities Act. I don't really see how your disability would prevent you from doing the job of a nurse so in that case, no they cannot deny you the job because of it.

[trauma_lama, BSN]

Hmmm I wonder... Sometimes colors are an important part of assessing. Wound drainage, redness around wound, cyanosis, rashes, pallor, etc... Would not having a deficiency with color perception impact one's assessment accuracy?

[trauma_lama, BSN]

Ps- curious. How does a person see colors but fail a color blindness test? I thought color blindness tests were designed to test whether or not a person could see color contrasts? What am I not getting?

[FLmomof5]

Color blind does not mean the person sees in black and white. There is red-green color blindness and blue-yellow. I was married to a color blind man. He was red-green colorblind. Grass and trees were brown to him. He saw pink as white. He tried to get a job in MD as a policeman. He passed everything but the color-blind test. He was denied the job because being able to properly see colors is critical to descriptions of perps, events, vehicles, etc.

He even went to college for a couple of years. He started out in Electrical Technology (as opposed to Engineering). He had to drop out of the program because he couldn't ascertain the colors of wires and the colors on resistors.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

my kid went to a maritime college. students who were color-blind could not be in the licensed majors (i.e., marine transportation or marine engineering) because being able to reliably distinguish red from green is absolutely non-negotiable in those environments.

i would think it would require extra care to be a nurse if one were fully colorblind, i.e., red/green and blue/yellow. they might actually have a safety advantage if all labels were in b&w and they didn't have color cues to distract them.

there are people who my neurology professor called "color stupid," where there were gradations of color-blindness, and they might be good at it. my ex-husband was color-stupid for the red-brown-green continuum, could identify extremes but got a little confused in the middle.