I’d have a pretty hard time taking medical advice from someone who wasn’t fit, but in my experience that’s usually the doctor. I don’t see how the nurse or receptionist’s weight is anyone else’s business.
And to throw in that old statistic, with 60% of Americans either overweight or obese, the odds are pretty slim (har har) that you are going to have very many nurses/receptionists/general office workers who aren’t overweight.
This woman who works at my YMCA gets irritated when we ask her to hand us the key to our cycle room. She is maybe two feet from it but she doesn’t like to get out of her chair. Now, IMO, that is in direct conflict with what the Y is trying to promote. And it’s a pain in the butt to deal with her about it.
Such requirements would either be found unlawful of legislated in to unlawfulness, because lawyers, judges and politicians are a pretty fat bunch overall. And I mean that literally.
I don’t know how it is in the US, but up here, the key word is bona fide occupational requirement. Employers can set whatever requirements they want as long as they are willing to defend it as a BFOR in court.
FWIW I doubt that “setting a good example” would hold up as a BFOR in court, in the OP’s specific case (medical professionals).
Because most of my skills are in my head. You could drop me naked anywhere in the world and I could do my job. I’m a nurse. I deliver babies and then care for them and their moms. I don’t need to be anyone’s idea of perfect. I went to college, passed state boards and maintain my license. As long as I am clean and sober, I could be 21 or 71, weigh 80 lbs or 280 lbs and still save lives, ease pain and educate.
Carrying extra weight on my frame doesn’t negate my skills. If I’m not an inspiration to you to be just like me because I weigh more than you think I should, I don’t feel like less of a nurse. I’ve saved too many children and women to feel like anyone’s idea of a failure.
Cyn, RN who doesn’t want to be dropped naked anywhere, not really.
Picking out a profession that is something like 90% women to pick on their weight when it has zero to do with how well they can perform their duties is bullshit. No bitching about fat bank tellers or convenience store clerks?
As far as posters not wanting to take advice from a fat medical staf member, get over yourselves. This isn’t about who’s better than who or whos setting the example, its objective medical reality. An overweight person can just as easily make the same proper judgement about the nature of your care even if they don’t practice it themselves.
In the US, weight is a legally protected class for employment discrimination in only a very few areas. IIRC, Santa Cruz, California is one of them. In other places, it actually is legal to terminate someone’s employment because of their weight (just like in most places it is legal to terminate someone’s employment because they are gay). As the saying goes, you can terminate someone for any reason, or no reason, as long as it’s not a prohibited reason.
In some cases, someone’s weight may be due to an ADA-qualifying disability. Then, it would also be illegal to terminate them due to their weight, assuming they could still do the job with reasonable accommodation.
What on earth would the bolded word be doing in an “objective” question? Are there no fat male nurses exist, or would the same concerns not apply to them?
Point taken. Thank you for writing this out in such a clear manner. I certainly feel that I have to back up a bit and be less judgmental after thinking about what you’ve said.
I like** Indygrrl**'s YMCA example as an example of someone’s lifestyle/attitude impinging on their job choice. Although, again, we only know what we see. Maybe the woman has some condition which makes it extremely painful for her to move the few feet to get the key. Maybe not. I guess it’s not necessarily my business. The only time when I thought it was somewhat my business was when I was going to Weight Watchers several years back. One of the leaders was about 40 lbs overweight and I did have some feelings about paying the amount of money I was, to be told how to diet by someone who was more overweight than I was. Again, not the end of the world, and she was able to speak about the principles of the WW program, but it did just ping my weird meter.
I’m sure fat male nurses exist, but (as I pointed out in the OP) I’m referencing an empirical real world observation I’ve made lately, in that I’ve been to several doctor’s offices recently for a check up for myself, and also in helping a a mobility compromised friend see various specialists. Virtually all the nurses I saw in the doctors offices were female, and a fair percentage of them ranged from somewhat to massively overweight. This observation is neither good, bad or indifferent it’s simply an observation.
The umbrage that some respondents are taking that I am even daring to posit the question is puzzling. I was curious about how enforceable appearance standards are as a part of occupational requirements. I could have chosen any occupation (the most obese, on average, occupational population I’ve ever encountered, bar none, are the male service clerks in comic book stores), but because I’ve seen a lot of nurses (virtually all female) lately, that was the population I chose to ask about.
I’m not picking on nurses or women specifically. Objectively, as a point of curiosity, I want to know how enforceable appearance standards are in the workplace. If you want to make it about male nurses, or comic book store clerks or whatever occupation pleases you go ahead.
It doesn’t look like weight is a protected class under employment law. It can be an issue if the weight is tied in with other issues (e.g., “no fat chicks” when fat guys are allowed). If the standards are applied reasonably and uniformly (e.g., using standard tables of normal weight for both men and women), it’s not illegal.
It’s also not illegal to discriminate against smokers. Smokers are smokers by choice; all protected classes are set up for things that are not a person’s choice (e.g., race).
Problem is with the profession you are targeting you are also expressing a point of view that is seen as horrifically offensive to many within the medical community. Part of going into any aspect of medicine is accepting that all people are just that, people deserving of the best care you can possibly provide with the skills and tools you have. A persons race, religion, politics, bad habits, drug addictions, fashion sense, sexual orientation, favorite foods, weight, whatever are irrelevant and have no impact on the care they will recieve.
People needing care also (granted my POV is from the EMT’s perspective) not customers in any traditional sense. When you need help, you better not care what comes through the door as long as it has the skills and tools to help you out of your situation. No value judgements are made about a persons lifestyle with regard to how to proceed with caring for that person. Many medical jobs are thankless enough without entering lifestyle value judgements into the mix.
Medical professions, especially high acuity ones also requires mindsets and emotional tools not everyone has. I have seen more than a few ER docs and nurses who despite the fact that they smoke or are overweight, would probably bleed icewater if you cut them while starting lines and intubating a mutiple gunshot wound patient, despite the screams, the smells, the flurry of activity around them, phones ringing, pagers going off. Nothing else matters except fixing the broken person that will bleed out in the next few minutes if they don’t fix it.
Judge these people as second class because they are overweight? Sad, because they would never do the same to you, the mere thought would make them more unfit to do their job than any of the things you seem to be concerned about.
What in the world are you talking about? How is it judging a group of people as second-class to point out that most representatives of that group one has seen lately happen to be overweight or obese? The way you’re going on about it, saying that it’s judgmental and offensive to remark that most female nurses one has seen lately are obese, it’s almost like you think that being obese is a bad thing and something to be ashamed of.
