Are HCA Standards Dropping?
April 24th, 2009. Filed under: Finance & Fitness Fridays.They certainly appear to be at Community Hospital of New Port Richey, FL. During a pre-employment physical, employee health nurse, Corrine, created a medical diagnosis for me. That goes beyond the scope of nursing practice. Only physicians are allowed to give a medical diagnosis. And rarely does a physician do so without a hands on examination and diagnostic tests. I guess Community Hospital is not aware that nurses are not allowed to do a physician’s job, especially if that is a means of discriminating against an employee or potential employee.
When a person is in the interviewing and preliminary states of a job, it is illegal to ask the applicant’s age. This is only found out after you’ve been offered the job and have to fill in the mounds of paperwork. My job was offered on the contingency of passing a background check and urine drug screen. That was easy. I have to wonder if my age had anything to do with nurse Corrine’s creative diagnosing which amounted to giving me a disability – another thing that is not supposed to cause discrimination as long as a person is capable of doing his job. After jumping through hoops to get a signed release from a doctor I had only seen one time, it still wasn’t good enough for Corrine. This was even a doctor she chose.
The next round was a little meeting with Christine, who heads up HR and Nurse Susan, the unit manager of the behavioral health unit. Susan told me that they were unable to hire me, because it would be an unsafe environment for me. She admitted that staff members are expected to routinely enter the rooms of potentially violent patients alone. She also admitted that they have insufficient backup on the unit to protect their employees, especially on the night shift.
It sounds as if God had a hand in protecting me from HCA’s lack of concern for employee safety, but it still irks a person when discrimination is part of the picture. My first job as a nurse was at an HCA hospital. It’s sad to see they have now lowered their standards this much.
Have you ever run into discrimination during a job search? If so, what did you do about it? I’ve already been advised to seek legal counsel.
April 24th, 2009 at 23:34
Glad your back, missed ya.
how much more of your time do you want to give these people?
If you sued and won….would you want the job or what?
April 25th, 2009 at 05:00
Just found your site today. Looks very interesting, I learned some important things. Rhonda
April 25th, 2009 at 05:19
Good to hear from you, Nova. I really don’t want to waste my time with these people. I’m not going to bother with legal action. They might have to give me the job and I certainly don’t want to work in this kind of environment.