The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that hospitals do not have to reduce a doctors’ patient load as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
When Frank Shin, a medical intern, began making serious medical errors, his supervisors reduced his patient load and began to “shadow” him, which placed a burden on the supervisors and other interns at the hospital.
Because of the ongoing difficulties, Shin was recommended to submit to a mental health evaluation and was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. When medication and rehabilitation did not improve his job performance he requested that the hospital reduce his patient load and provide an on-call nurse practitioner as accommodations. When the hospital refused and terminated Shin, he filed suit, alleging a failure to accommodate him on the basis of a disability.
A district court ruled in favor of the hospital and Shin appealed. Because Shin was not able to perform the job’s essential functions with or without accommodations, a prerequisite to filing an ADA claim, the court never addressed whether the interns ADD qualified as a disability under the law.
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