Re-reading the OP, it struck me to wonder if Astro understands that not all persons working in medical offices are nurses. Many offices have their staff in scrubs but the people at the reception desks are not nurses. Perhaps the persons in scrubs weighing and taking blood pressures are not nurses. And what activities are being performed by nurses that require physical fitness? Why would the office doctor in private practice hire and retain these persons in scrubs if they could not profitably go about their assigned duties? My guess would be because they are effective. I am sometimes tempted by a doctor to join his/her practice because of my education, experience and seemingly sweet nature. A new OB commented that I seemed like I could make work-life a whole lot easier.
I can’t imagine a doctor upsetting his/her office routine by requiring staff weight limitations, and it takes years and thousands of dollars to create a new nurse: that’s why there is a nurse shortage nationwide (8.5% vacancy rate).
Who would the doctor replace those nurses with?
Lots of problems with discriminating on the basis of weight. Here are just a few:
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Smoking is a behavior. Being fat is a physical condition. In general we do not discriminate against people for physical conditions. Even those related to past behavior. We may discriminate against active drinkers and drug users, but we defend the rights of recovering alcoholics. All you really know about a fat person is that at some point they ate excessive calories compared to what they burned. You don’t know if they’re dieting or excercising. For all you know they’ve lost 100 lbs and are exercising a lot more than you.
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BMI tends to correlate with class/race/gender. If you start discriminating on the basis of it, you’re disproportionately burdening women, people of color, and the poor. That’s why you see overweight people in support in hospitals – because of the demographic groups who do these jobs: women, minorities and the poor. And this is not simply because ethnicity and gender correlate with “bad behavior.” Black women tend to be considerably heavier than average, while black men tend to be less heavy than average. There are some genuine genetic propensities involved. Native Americans are more obese in part because of social factors, but also in part because they haven’t coevolved with thousands of years of farming. And of course underweight has a severe impact on female fertility, which is probably the main reason obesity is more prevalent in women.
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Everyone casually conflates overweight with “bad behavior” or “poor lifestyle choices”. But if that’s so, what bad behavior are we really discriminating against? Overeating? Well, if a woman ate as much as your average thin man, she’d be severely obese. Against sedentary behavior? Well what about the fat who do exercise, or the thin who don’t? OK, then, are we discriminating against relative overeating: eating more than you’re burning? Barely. Exceed your expenditure by an apple a day for 30 years will easily get you 100 lbs overweight. This does not represent a shocking vice. The truth is, across a population, fat may correlate with certain behaviors, but it’s not proof of anything significant except that the person in front of you is fat.
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People say “fat people are unproductive” or “fat people get sick.” But the best worker in my office was the fattest person I’ve ever known. Did the fact that she was fat negate everything she did? We could also say non-religious people are sicker and unhappier. Short people die younger. And by the way not being fat correlates with higher rates of depression and smoking. When do we start recognizing that statistics are being used as a fascist tool?
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Ultimately all proponents for fat discrimination base their argument on a single assumption: fat is a choice. But that’s a highly questionable proposition. This is a long enough post so instead of stretching it out another page I’ll just cite two of the leading researchers on the biology of obesity: cite , [cite](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html? sec=health&res=9D07EFDF1F3FF934A25753C1A9669C8B63)
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Because the biology is better understood, health authorities themselves are no longer trying to force fat people to be thin. It’s people who don’t understand the issue that are still thinking that way. You may not have noticed it, but there’s been a shift in the messages coming from public health. The NIH no longer recommends physicians encourage people to reach an “ideal weight” precisely because they understand that it’s a statistically and (and probably physiologically) unreasonable goal. You now see messages talking about the importance of a small drop in weight a) because they recognize that a large drop in weight is not achievable for most people; and b) because in fact mortality statistics routinely show that a large drop in weight correlates with higher mortality and morbidity than a small drop (whether or not the weight loss was “intentional.” And a big reason that they’re talking about childhood obesity now is because they recognize that once a kid is fat the chances that they can lose weight is remote. The thinking is, maybe if we can’t cure obesity, we can prevent it.
( hey Uglybeech, can you send me an email? Your Hotmail ain’t workin’. Thanks 'Toons )
The question is moot. There’s still rather a shortage of nurses. According to the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employers in some parts of the country and in certain employment settings are reporting difficulty in attracting and retaining an adequate number of RNs”. And while there is less of a shortage for LPNs, growth in the number of jobs is still expected to be high. Applying additional difficulties to getting nurses will not be in an employer’s best interest.
Discrimination on a basis of religion is illegal, and one’s religion is a choice.
A friend of mine used to live next door to a woman who was fired from her job working in a pharmacy. She’s overweight, but was allegedly fired for “excessive flatulence”. That’s a double whammy right there.
I’m thinking that a nekkid RN might be a bit distracting to patients, regardless of the size of the RN. Just my thought through. 
Not really, I can’t go and become a Hindu overnight any more than I can become a gay male overnight. It’s not “biological” but not a choice exactly.
I’m not sure what ‘overnight’ has to do with it, but we’re gonna have to agree to disagree that a free adult can choose his religion. Granted, circumstances could make changing it a very difficult choice. (The only exceptions I can think of are minor children and cult members).
On second thought, maybe we’re in agreement. If you’re saying that a person’s actual beliefs cannot be changed at will, then I’m with you. (I think it was Schopenhauer who said that a man is responsible for what he thinks, but not for what he believes).
But for the purpose of this thread, we are talking about a person’s declared religious affiliation, which a free adult may choose.