Forming Perceptions of Others and Managing Diversity

4.1 How do I form perceptions of others?
4.2 How can I use awareness of stereotypes to make better decisions and manage more effectively?
4.3 How do I tend to interpret employee performance?
4.4 How does awareness about the layers of diversity help organizations effectively manage diversity?
4.5 What is the business rationale for managing diversity?
4.6 What are the most common barriers to implementing successful diversity programs?.
4.7 What are organizations doing to effectively manage diversity, and what works best?
Legal/Ethical Challenge
Should Patient Requests Trump Health Care Employees’ Civil Rights?
This case describes an incident that occurred at Beaumont Hospital in Dearborn, Michigan, and resulted in a lawsuit.
Teoka Williams, a 10-year veteran black nurse at Beaumont, overheard her patient comment in a racially charged manner that she did not want to be cared for by a black nurse. Williams reported the incident to the hospital’s clinical manager who proceeded to bar the nurse from treating both the patient and the other patients sharing her room.
Williams filed a complaint with the hospital’s human resources department and was told that “patient requests are honored all the time and the next time it happens she would simply be taken off the assignment altogether.” She felt “humiliated, embarrassed, and disappointed” by the experience. Her attorney Julie Gafkey said that health care facilities should not consent to patient requests at the expense of their employees’ civil rights. Williams sued the hospital for federal and state civil rights violations.
The American Medical Association’s ethics code expressly prevents physicians from discriminating against patients based on race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other clinically irrelevant characteristics. Official policies and guidelines for dealing with patient discrimination against health care providers, however, are virtually nonexistent. Further, a survey of “emergency physicians found patients often make such requests, and they are routinely accommodated. A third of doctors who responded said they felt patients perceive better care from providers of shared demographics, with racial matches considered more important than gender or religion.”
Some hospitals are beginning to address this issue. For example, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has developed policies and procedures to protect its staff from patient discrimination. The policies allow staff members to deny discriminatory patient requests, extend guidance for handling such requests, and outline official reporting mechanisms.
What would you have done if you were a medical administrator at the time the request was made?
I would not have honored the patient’s request. I would have explained why Teoka Williams and other African American nurses are best suited to take care of the patient.
I would have done exactly what the hospital did. The patient has a right to be taken care of by someone with a preferred race or gender.
What would you do about the lawsuit?
Fight it. It’s ridiculous that someone would feel emotional stress and humiliation from simply being reassigned.
Settle it and create a policy that prohibits honoring future requests like this.
Settle it and create a policy that prohibits honoring future requests like this.
Settle it but hold a hospital-wide meeting explaining the rationale for continuing to accommodate such requests.