Those Emergency Blues: Fat Nurses Need Not Apply Revisited

By torontoemerg, on May 14, 2012, at 10:13 am

More on the Texas hospital, Citizens Medical Center, which banned fat people from being hired. Citizens Medical Center, you might remember, made it policy to exclude new hires with a body mass index >35, and explicitly stated employees appearance should “fit with a representational image or specific mental projection of the job of a healthcare professional . . . free from distraction” for patients. Medscape has a video (sorry, couldn’t figure out how to embed) from a medical ethicist named Art Caplan with another point of view. Partial transcript:

Look, I’m all for trying to set a good example and . . . → Read More: Those Emergency Blues: Fat Nurses Need Not Apply Revisited

 
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Those Emergency Blues: Nursing Week Ain’t What It Used to Be

By torontoemerg, on May 9, 2012, at 10:28 am

My Nurses Week joy was shattered last night when the son of a patient reamed me out for discussing the patient’s condition and treatment plan — wait for it — with the patient. He thought his father, who was a rather elderly but very independent and shrewd man who still lived in his own house and putted around in a low-mileage 1992 K-car, might be disturbed and upset. I thought the son was a controlling little freakazoid, but didn’t say so. Not very nurse-like, I know, but your humble writer smiled and nodded and went on, curiously enough, to validate

. . . → Read More: Those Emergency Blues: Nursing Week Ain’t What It Used to Be

 
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Those Emergency Blues: Fat Nurses Need Not Apply

By torontoemerg, on March 27, 2012, at 12:29 pm

A Texas hospital has declared war on the scourge of obese nurses:

A Victoria [Texas] hospital already embroiled in a discrimination lawsuit filed by doctors of Indian descent has instituted a highly unusual hiring policy: It bans job applicants from employment for being too overweight.

The Citizens Medical Center policy, instituted a little more than a year ago, requires potential employees to have a body mass index of less than 35 — which is 210 pounds for someone who is 5-foot-5, and 245 pounds for someone who is 5-foot-10. It states that an employee’s physique “should fit with a

. . . → Read More: Those Emergency Blues: Fat Nurses Need Not Apply

 
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