DHB discriminated against bi-polar nurse - ERA

The Southland District Health Board (SDHB) has been found guilty of discriminating against an emergency department nurse because she suffered bipolar disorder.

In a decision released this month, Employment Relations Authority member Philip Cheyne said the board was unwilling to take reasonable steps available to accommodate the nurse's disability.

In his findings, Mr Cheyne said the woman had worked as a registered nurse in the emergency department at Southland Hospital since July 2005. Her role involved shift work, including rostered night shifts.

In December 2007 her doctor provided a medical certificate that said that, because of a medical condition, the nurse should not do nightshifts.

Her psychiatrist then wrote to the SDHB in February 2008 advising the nurse had bipolar affective disorder which, although was generally under very good control, had become destabilised by night shift work.

"The mood disorders of the kind she suffers from are so closely linked with disturbance of the body's own day/night, sleep/wakefulness regulation, that the disruption of intermittent night shift work is often incompatible with good control of the disorder."

As a result, the woman wanted to work only day and afternoon shifts in the emergency department.

However, after a series of emails, letters and meetings between the SDHB, the nurse and her lawyer, she was advised on June 30, 2008, the board would not "make an exception to the policy that all nurses in ED work night shift".

The decision was made despite the woman receiving support from a group of emergency department nurses who offered to cover her night shift requirement.

Because she could no longer work in the emergency department the nurse was given other work within the hospital of either a casual, fixed term or part-time nature and generally involving fewer hours than her usual fulltime position.

Mr Cheyne said, as a result, the nurse lost remuneration, experienced uncertainty and anxiety about her ongoing employment and suffered a reduction in job satisfaction from not being able to work in the emergency department.

She was also withdrawn from a training course she otherwise would have attended.

He acknowledged the woman should have disclosed her bipolar condition in 2005 when she was asked in an employment form: "Do you have or have you had in the past mental health/stress related conditions?"

If she had answered "yes" there would have been a greater focus on her suitability to work in the emergency department at the time, he said.

But responsibility for the unlawful discrimination rested with the SDHB for its unwillingness to take reasonable steps available to accommodate the nurse's disability so she could continue to work there.

Mr Cheyne ruled the SDHB pay the nurse $7500 compensation ($10,000 less a 25 per cent reduction for her contribution) and 75 per cent of her lost remuneration.