Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
A Texas hospital is under fire for banning job applicants from employment for being obese.
The Citizens Medical Center in the south eastern town of Victoria requires all potential employees to have a body mass index – a formula used to determine fat – of less than 35, according to its CEO
If the hospital job is an office position (secretarial, mailroom, clerical administrative, etc.) then I don't think weight should have anything to do with the job, except that the candidate should be capable of sitting in the chairs provided without breaking them. I think that's a reasonable expectation.
If the job involves bending over the patients - such as for changing bed pans or helping turn them, administering medicine, even rolling their guernies at the head of the mattress...then I can understand a concern for "too" overweight. Notice they're not banning anyone who's overweight. They're rejecting applicants who are -significantly- obese.
Perhaps they should use some other measurement besides BMI, however. It isn't likely they're going to reject that 7% fat football player with a 35 BMI. They're looking at obesity. If they're obese AND their BMI is 35, then they can either lose the weight, or they can seek employment elsewhere.
And if you're the typical patient in -that- hospital - and they say that'd be geriatrics, people 65 years old or older...then the last thing you'd want to see while you're recovering from your hip replacement, is some big blubbery roll of flab slithering over the guard rail of your bed while ripples of flesh wobble overhead, when the man in the sta-puff marshmallow suit reaches over to change your IV pain med drip bag.
That kind of image is -not- conducive to healing. It might sound harsh, and cruel to hear, but it is just how it is. Perception can be cruel. And like it or not, those patients' perception takes priority over candidates who haven't even completed the hiring process yet, with regards to "who gets to determine what image we will present to the patients."
They want to present the image of healthy employees. Obese people don't -look- healthy. Whether they're healthy or not is irrelevent. It's the image that matters, when you're dealing with sick people who need to accept care from care-givers, willingly, and cooperatively.
Sort of like, you wouldn't want your dermatologist to have a disfiguring skin disease covering her face. Or a plastic surgeon with a lousy botox job..or a toothless, dentureless dentist.
If I'm sick, and trying to get healthy, I don't want someone who -looks- unhealthy caring for me. It reduces, and can eradicate, that bond of trust *required* between patient and caregiver.
A lot of nurses are overweight from shift work/stress. Also, I believe nurses smoke at a higher rate than the general population, as do respiratory therapists. Go figure.
Regarding not wanting to see an obese person take care of you, why not have rules that only really good-looking people can take care of you? That's just absurd. Maybe I'd rather take care of people who don't need a bedpan or who don't have big ugly stretch marks, but hey, that's the gig.
Regarding not hiring obese people for fear of injury, that's tricky. Non-obese people can certainly hurt their backs in moving patients, and so on.
The thing that people don't understand is that once a crack develops in a dam, it never just stays a small crack - it slowly gets bigger and bigger until you have a full rupture of the dam itself.
So 35 BPI is totally reasonable, huh? Keep the fattest people out, as they "obviously" can't do their jobs. Well then, what's to stop them from dropping it down to 30, that's still obese, right? And they're thinking of shifting the threshold of "obesity" from 30 to 28 - oops, time to change our hiring policy, nobody with a BMI of 28 need apply. See where this is going? Not to mention that people with poor credit can't get jobs now, people with "unacceptable" facebook pages can't jobs now, people that have been out of work for more than 6 months can't get a job, and the list goes on and on.
Eventually, NOBODY will be able to get a job, unless they're J.H. Christ himself, as He's the only person that's ever been alive that was perfect in every way shape and form.
It's things like this that makes me hope and pray for the global economic collapse, as I feel this is the only thing that will bring humanity back together and develop a humane economic system (and no, this will not be capitalism...lol).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
