Yeeeah, I kinda sorta think that there’s a pretty good chance that she might just have figured out why she was reassigned.
Acceding to his wishes while he was still physically present in the NICU so that the situation was temporarily defused was fine. But continuing to discriminate against the nurse thereafter is inexcusable. As phouka said, this isn’t the first time they’ve had to deal with a crazy person.
And the neo-nazi guy wasn’t the “customer.” The newborn baby was.
Assign a hospital security guard to the African-American nurse. If dad steps out of line, call the police.
Expensive and intrusive, I’d say.
Less expensive than the lawsuit by the nurse?
Maybe they assumed the nurse was going to act like a healthcare professional rather than someone who got cut from the junior high volleyball team. Healthcare means dealing with the public frequently at their worst which meants setting aside emotions and doing whatever is best to keep your patients safe and your hospital facility running at full capacity. My mother-in-law is a nurse midwife. When someone tells her to “keep her dirty Gypsy hands” off their relative, unless it’s a life or death situation that instant, she steps back and hands the patient off to another nurse because it causes less stress in an already violatile situation because in healthcare taking care of the patient does outrank the feelings of the healthcare provider.
That was poor judgement on their part then, wasn’t it? Poor judgement that will now cost thousands of dollars to defend. A change in policy is warranted.
The difference is that your mother-in-law is making that decision. She isn’t having her schedule fucked up or hours shortened (with an attendant loss in pay) because of her employer’s illegal discrimination. Not all discrimination is illegal, of course, but changing a person’s schedule against her will based on race is a pretty cut and dried case.
As a nurse, I get it - my nursing style isn’t suited for every patient, nor is my experience, my skills or my personality. And yes, sometimes the color of my skin. And I’m okay with not being assigned to patients with whom I can’t have an effective therapeutic relationship. I’ve been known to request it, in fact. Only one of those is an illegal reason to alter my schedule or pay.
What would I do as the nursing supervisor? Probably accommodate the patient (and to a nurse, the family of an infant in NICU is also a patient, in reality if not in billing) to reduce stress and promote healing, but be damn sure I gave the nurse her regular schedule, even if she isn’t assigned that patient. Will it cost me and maybe make me go overbudget? Yep. But far less than legal fees from either direction.
And that change in policy could very well be having all healthcare professionals and staff sign a policy indicating they understand that if patients or patient’s relatives raise objections to them as care provider they must accept changes in patients, shifts, or scheduling. Granted hospital care is a more necessary and specialized service than retail service, but I don’t see this going down any better for the nurse than a waiter who complains because customers refuse to have him or her as their server. She may get a settlement, but she’ll also get a reputation for being more concerned about her comfort zone than her patients’ care. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable if I learned my nurse was suing a hospital over something like this.
I think my brain just exploded. Just…wow.
I must say, I always find curious the logic that people employ when defending (or, as the case may be, mitigating) that which is indefensible, as some in this thread are doing, and with no apparent sense of shame.
Just for instance, we’ve been told that the hospital did the right thing based on the fear that the Nazi bastard *might *shoot up the NICU. Seriously?
Okay, fair enough, but let’s try this: Suppose the Nazi bastard was renting an apartment and demanded that his landlord not rent any units in the same building to black people?
Or suppose Nazi bastard gets on a plane and, discovering that his seatmate is black, demands another seat, but the plane is full? What does the airline do–remove the black passenger? Oh, and he refuses to take a later flight because he’s accompanied by his child who requires a life-saving operation in another city, and a later flight might cause a fatal delay in the child’s care? Ooh, and what if the black seatmate were in the same situation? How to decide, how to decide? Or, hey, what if the pilot were black, and Nazi bastard refused to fly with a black pilot?
And on, and on, and on.
What are we supposed to do? Simply accommodate all sorts of bigots and violate established federal law because they might become violent, or because their child might suffer if their bigoted demands aren’t met? And if so, where does it end?
No. We remind then that the live in America and, as much as they don’t like it, the law doesn’t allow us to discriminate against people based on the color of their skin or the demands of some asshole. We tell them what phouka’s channeled mother would tell them, or we tell them to suck it up and risk getting black cooties or get the hell off the airplane.
And, anyway, what if they did it to you? What if your job reassigned you, a highly-trained professional, based on some asshole’s demand that a white nurse (I’m assuming that you’re white–or, at the least, not black) not touch their baby? Would you really be okay with that? What if it happened everyday? What if every patient/baby’s parent didn’t want you working on them based on your race or skin color or etc. Would you be okay with that, too?
Look, your mother-in-law is free (and you would be, too), as someone else pointed out, to acquiesce to assholes who don’t want her “gypsy” hands on them, but the rest of us? Those of us who actually give a damn about the dignity of other human beings, even if they are–ewww–black? We. Do. Not. Give. In. To. Bigoted. Assholes. Not in the United States of America, and certainly not in the 21st century.
Your mileage apparently varies. And more is the pity, sir, more is the pity.
I am Roma. The skinheads, Neo-Nazis, etc., of the United States do not consider me white. Luckily, the prejudice against my people is not as remotely bad in the United States as it is parts of Europe (where we had the honor of being Hitler’s second most hated minority). I am a reference librarian at a university. I’ve had faculty and students not want to work with me because they believe I can’t possibly be competent at what I do because their preconceived notation based on my ethnicity is that I am uneducated, probably borderline illiterate and a criminal. In such a case, I hand them over to another librarian. If that librarian has a full schedule and doesn’t have time to see them for several days or doesn’t have the background for finding resources in that area of research as I do, they must suffer through that choice. Luckily, the type of library work I do has almost no chance of ever involving physical life or death choices for the patrons. But a child in a NICU (or anybody in an ICU unit) is at risk for death and shouldn’t have to suffer because of their parent’s bad choices.
actually I’d be worried that RM would sue the hospital for (pick a bullshit medical reason). As a hospital worker I’d be glad to be reassigned so as not to have to interact with a dill-hole.
I’d accommodate him just to get him out the door and just for good measure look extra hard at the possibility there was child abuse involved. Nothing says “ya’ll come back now” like a visit from children’s services. That’s the message I’d want PM to take back to his buddies.
If those changes are made on the basis of race, the hospital will be hauled into court again. You can’t avoid federal law by just issuing a policy change.
I would think the racist asshole would have a complaint of simple assault on behalf of his child the moment any hospital employee draws blood or does any of a multitude of medical procedures on the infant without the father’s consent.
Medical professionals cannot force treatment on mentally competent persons who are capable of making decisions - even life saving treatment and even if the decision is a really bad one. Parents get to make those decisions on behalf of their minor children.
The hospital would be wise to seek a court order appointing a a sane temporary guardian who can provide legal consent. In the time it takes to do that their hands are tied. If the court refuses then the hospital should tell the father he is free to take his child elsewhere and explain the risks of doing so.
It doesn’t work that way. When you’re admitted, you (or the parent, if the patient is a minor) sign a blanket consent to treat. You don’t necessarily have to sign a consent for each and every blood draw, imaging study, or routine procedure; the paperwork alone would be a nightmare. Therefore, there is no claim for assault possible because you gave permission for all necessary treatment at admission.
I think part of the problem is that the hospital chose to handle it in a very ham-handed fashion. Instead of handling staffing requests privately and discreetly, they chose to make a big deal of it. Patients make requests about hospital staff all the time for a million different reasons. Most of the time, these requests are handled with discretion; the offending staff member is simply re-assigned. But the hospital made it public and made clear the reasons why. They opened themselves up to a guaranteed discrimination suit to avoid the possibility of a suit for… what, exactly. And any safety issues could have been handled by beefing up security on the NICU floor and having the guards/police/whoever a little more visible.
The hospital made its bed, and now they have to lie in it. I hope the nurse gets a nice settlement and a nice reference.
Is there any evidence that the nurse had her schedule changed? I mean, babies are in the NICU full time, so it’s not like they shifted the nurse to a time when the baby wasn’t there. If they sent her home because this was the only baby in the NICU, that would be very different.
Provided her schedule wasn’t shifted or changed in any way–she was just reassigned to different patients and told not to touch that baby unless it was an emergency–this seems reasonable to you? This is an honest question: I really don’t know.
Most of the other posters seem to feel that the discrimination was wrong, full stop, on principle–whether or not it had any practical effect is immaterial because the very fact of being discriminated against lessens a person, and that humoring that worldview under any circumstances is not tolerable. I am sympathetic to that view, especially because it was apparently an institutional decision: if a floor manager on the spot had given into the crazy, possibly violent dad until arrangements could be made, it would be a lot more defensible.
Yes, but I imagine you can withdraw that consent–which is when the hospital can run for a lawyer, and I am pretty sure they will wake a judge up if it’s a life-or-death thing.
And in that case, if a parent tries to withdraw consent for treatment if a black woman is allowed to touch his child, is that grounds for a judge to have a temporary guardian appointed? I really have no idea.
So agreeing to the discrimination is ok, but making it public is not? That seems off, somehow: if the discrimination is wrong, it’s WRONG, and if the lesser of two evils has to be accommodated (which is something I could be persuaded of), it seems like you shouldn’t compound the evil with dishonesty.
This I don’t believe. Staffing at big institutions is always a mess, especially for something like security, which is surely its own little world. It would not be simple or easy to have an extra 150-man hours or whatever of security time assigned to the NICU because a scary dad was freaking out the nurses.
It might, if the hospital can show that withdrawal of consent may lead to the baby’s death or disability.
Except that I didn’t say that discrimination isn’t wrong. I probably could have worded it better, but that the fact that the hospital made it public made an ugly situation worse. If the goal was to head off a potential lawsuit from the father, they failed because they basically told a nurse to sue them for discrimination, and they guaranteed her a large judgment. And, of course, the public relations nightmare can’t be good for the bottom line, either. Had they kept it quiet, the discrimination would still have been discrimination, and the nurse would still have had grounds for a lawsuit, but the whole thing wouldn’t have been such an ugly mess for all concerned.
Where did I specifically say that the hospital had to increase manpower? Again, I could have been clearer, but “beefing up security” could be something as simple as making sure that a security guard does an extra round or two to the NICU. When I was at the VA, SOP in cases where there was a safety risk was to apprise Security of the situation, and to let them make the call. Maybe that involved posting an extra guard on that floor, maybe it was something as simple as a phone call once an hour to make sure everything was OK. Sometimes, the guy was just a guy with a creepy vibe, but other times, the risk was real and demonstrable.
Really???
In America? (I gather from the rest of your post that you are in the U.S.- correct?)
I would guess that 9 in 10 Americans don’t even know the word Roma outside the context of spaghetti and old Dean Martin songs. Of the 1 in 10 who do know who Roma are, I’d assume we’re dealing with a more educated and less ignorant segment of society.
Sure, Americans have some notion of “Gypsies” but I’d say that the typical American notion of Gypsies is about as connected to the Roma people as the typical American notion of Witches is connected to religious adherents of Wicca. For most Americans, “Gypsy” is nothing more than a Halloween costume.
Any actual familiarity with “Gypsies” would be tied to notions of that traveling lifestyle in rickety wagons, telling fortunes and dancing performances at town fairs. Once you’re living a lifestyle of working a steady job at a university with a stable permanent resident, I can’t imagine many Americans even recognizing you as a “Gypsy”- and since they have no idea what “Roma” is, I can’t imagine even the bigots knowing which properly labeled bigot box to put you in.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about your actual real life experiences, but this is just really surprising to me- especially in a university setting. You must live in a part of the country where they take their racism very seriously.
Edit for typo
Ham-handed is an understatement. After mulling it over I’ve changed my mind. My first response to the request would be to call security over and make sure that request was overheard by God and everybody. wouldn’t say squat to the guy until they came over. If the child is in danger and can’t be transported to another hospital then security can detain the guy until child services arrives (assuming the guy tries to leave).
Yes, it really does seem reasonable to me, as long as she is given meaningful work within her scope of practice and the paycheck to go with it. And I have to tell you that, while the last time we went round on this issue I got bitchslapped by several posters for saying so, and I think a nurse was among them, in real life, I haven’t met a nurse who wouldn’t accept a patient reassignment in such a scenario. Hours cut, no. Patient reassignment, yes. It happens all the time. Usually you just don’t find out about it in the paper because it’s handled quietly and with dignity and respect for the nurses involved (and a bit of catty bitching about asshole racists when we hang out with other nurses.)
I feel that nursing care is different than service at a restaurant, or getting your taxes done or buying groceries or just about any other business transaction you can name, because it is so very intimate and emotionally laden. It’s physically intimate, it’s emotionally intimate, it’s psychologically and spiritually and every other -ally intimate. And if you don’t *trust *your nurse, he’s not going to be able to be the best nurse he can be, and your healing won’t be the best it can be, because stress hormones make healing hard. A lack of trust makes many procedures hard. And being sick is already hard.
It’s also different legally, in that you’re rarely directly hiring the nurse involved in your care. You’re not bound by federal antidiscrimination laws, but the hospital is. Given that in all but the smallest hospitals (which tend not to have NICUs at all), there are almost always other patients who aren’t racist assholes, I think this problem almost always solves itself if handled with care, as it usually is. We’ve had three lawsuits mentioned in this thread. I’m going to bet more than 3000 patients were quietly reassigned today across the country that we’ll never hear about, some for race, some for personality conflict, some for gender concerns, and some for other reasons.
Would I rather people weren’t racist assholes? Of course. But I also would rather people ate right and exercised and took their medications as ordered. Doesn’t matter what I’d rather, I’ve got to deal with the situation as it presents itself. And a health crisis situation is not the time to try to reprogram someone out of their racist assholishness. There are far more pressing issues at hand, like keeping them breathing and their heart beating and most of their blood inside their body. If we’re healthy so far up on Maslow’s hierarchy that we can be treating psychosocial problems, then we can reassess our care plan and potentially tell the patient to fuck off and find another person to care for him if he’s so inclined. But if a person is in the hospital for a physiological problem, then that problem is my priority, not curing him of being a racist asshole.
I do not claim to speak for all nurses, of course. But you asked me, and that’s my answer for me. Lily white ass me, who has in the course of 18 months been reassigned d/t race twice, for being “too pretty” twice (insecure spousal units) and once just 'cause the patient and I didn’t get along for no reason either of us could put our finger on.
Consent issues with children are vast and complicated and sometimes very ugly. Let’s just say that legally, parents do *not *have the right to have their child removed from a hospital if the staff considers it unsafe. Consents are still requested of parents because it’s easier that way, but every hospital pediatrician has a judge on speed dial to override parents if the pediatrician thinks a test or procedure is in the child’s best interest. You basically have no rights over your child’s medical care once they’re in a hospital setting and their life is in danger, and it’s the doctor who decides if their life is in danger, not the parents. I’m not saying it’s right, but right now it’s reality.
Absolutely. That is why I would hope someone would call the hospital’s legal gurus to get this in front of a judge ASAP. Babies are not put in the NICU unless there are serious, potentially life threatening medical issues.
I occasionally deal with a similar issue. I work in a 9-1-1 center and once in a while a caller demands a police officer or paramedic of a particular race and/or nationality. I simply explain that such requests cannot be a part of my decision making process as to who to send on a call for service. I document the matter and also inform the responders and their supervisors. The caller is free to withdraw his/her request for assistance assuming it is not against public policy.