Those of you in management/hiring positions...

Nurses General Nursing

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would you hire a nurse if you knew that she was pregnant? i just started an internship position and noticed that one of the ladies in my class is pregnant. i don't have a problem with it...i'm just curious as to how this affects women and being hired.

Specializes in ER OR LTC Code Blue Trauma Dog.

Think of it as you are running a business and paying money to hire someone to mow a lawn for a homeowner. (your employees)

Your employee operating budget is limited to $20.00 to hire a person to mow this homeowners lawn.

Then your employee goes on leave and you still have pay that person $20.00 anyways even though they are on leave and when they can no longer mow lawns.

But you realize the homeowners lawn still needs to be cut while the employee you hired is now away on paid leave. So now you have to spend another $20.00 to hire someone else to mow the homeowners lawn.

So now your employee operating budget went from $20.00 to $40.00 and you end up with only one person to mow the lawn.

Then the homeowner wants to know why he was overcharged and why you went 100% over the allocated employee budget when making your hiring decision.

So as the new hiring manager for this lawn mowing company, what hiring decision / practices / policies etc would you make in the future?

My Best,

Specializes in L&D, PACU.

Is it legal to discriminate based on pregnancy status?

Ooh, had to edit to add this (I'm in an evil frame of mind) You likely would hire another person to mow your lawn. But you might not hire another nurse, just work the other nurses a little harder and longer to make up for it until the nurse returned from leave. Believe me, it happens.

Specializes in LTC.

I know it's illegal to NOT hire someone because of pregnancy, but I'm sure this stuff happens every day. There's usually a way out, so to speak. But, once hired, it is completely illegal to demote someone because of pregnancy, it's called sex discrimination. It's easier to prove once hired, a lot harder to prove this is why you were not hired.

my thinking is that an employer might be a little apprehensive about not hiring a pregnant woman. if say there were 5 applicants for one position, and one of them was pregnant, i would think the employer would be more inclined to pick from the other 4. how would one prove that it was based on discrimination if 3 other nurses, none of whom are pregnant were not hired either?

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