week 6 discussion reply

Page 1: Discussion reply to Nicole M.

  Advancing my nursing profession into a nurse executive role, dealing with health care staff that have disabilities requires proper accommodation. Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, with the goal of encouraging disabled individuals to take part in work and social environments by discouraging discrimination. The law is intended to balance the needs of disabled citizens with the ability of public and certain private entities to reasonably accommodate those needs without causing hardship. As a nurse executive following the ADA law and accommodating health care staff can present with challenging requests. Qualified individuals with the proper skills, experience, and education must have an equal opportunity without discrimination. One challenging example is that the employer may not ask an applicant to take a medical examination prior to a job being offered, this includes drug testing, which is considered a medical examination (Westerick, 2014).
As a nurse executive, accommodations for individuals with visual, walking, communicating, sitting, reading disabilities, and mental health conditions, decisions must be delegating proper tasks and accommodating with proper tools to the individuals. Legal implications to the employee are to accommodate, if the person feels that accommodations are not suitable the employee can file a complaint and obtain counsel to file a lawsuit. The impact that nurse executive faces are the accommodations of individuals in a demanding environment within the hospital setting. When there is a nursing shortage, accommodations are provided, however, individuals with disabilities and accommodations may not feel they are being treated fairly and may file a lawsuit. There becomes a fine line of fair and following the ADA recommendations and equal opportunities for all individuals. Employers must be obligated to follow the ADA (Wilkenson, 2016).

Page 2: Discussion reply to Maria B
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. The ADA protects a qualified individual with a disability from unfair treatment or harassment based on disability and entitles reasonable accommodation to perform the job (EEOC, 2020). As a Nurse Executive, this means that I have a duty to provide a reasonable accommodation to my nurses so they can get their job done. The law is not meant to offer special treatment, rather, it offers reasonable adjustments to complete the work. The accommodation must not cause the employer undue hardship (EEOC, 2020). For example, if you have a nurse who is diabetic, instead of taking 1 long lunch break, it may be reasonable to split up her breaks throughout the day to ensure that she is receiving appropriate nutritional intake and doesnt suffer a hypoglycemic event. It would be unreasonable to ask the employer to grant excessive lunch breaks daily which could result in compromised patient care. The law also provides authority for employers to seek supporting medical information to justify the grounds for the accommodation.
 I do think that as senior leaders we have to be mindful of what is a reasonable accommodation. Thinking back to our last chapter, if a nurse has a substance dependence issue and is diverting narcotics, where do we draw the line between accommodating an individuals mental health condition and our duty to protect our patients? Best practice guidelines recommend that nurses in these instances be treated as individuals suffering chronic mental health conditions. While we have a duty to accommodate, I certainly side with the primary need to protect patients at all times, so you can see how the lines can be blurry in some situations.