Pharmacist should bare forearms

THE “bare below the elbow” policy is strictly enforced at Life Entabeni Hospital in Durban when health workers engage with patients in wards, and especially in the Intensive Care Unit.

However, a Muslim staffer was having none of it, arguing that her faith did not allow her to expose her forearms and wrists in public.

Farzana Ismail said the bare below the elbow policy constituted unfair discrimination against people of her faith, and wanted it overturned.

While acknowledging the fact that the Health Department had to have measures in place to safeguard patients – especially those in ICU – she suggested that she be allowed to wear long disposable gloves, which she would change after coming in contact with each patient.

Her dispute with the hospital went to arbitration where commissioner Hilda Grobler concluded that the policy was fair.

She said that if an exception must be made for Ismail and thus others of the Muslim faith working at the hospital, the annual cost of providing disposable sleeves would cost more than R53 million a year, which would eventually be passed on to the consumer.

Ismail had been working at the hospital since 2011 as a pharmacist in the hospital dispensary. As she did not work directly with patients, she was allowed to wear her full Islamic dress.

She, however, applied to advance to a clinical practice pharmacist and as such, had to make daily clinical ward rounds – mostly in the ICU – to assess the patients and their medication.

The hospital told her that, in this new position, she had to adhere to their bare below the elbow policy as prescribed by the health authorities.

In the end she was sent back to perform her duties in the pharmacy, although her salary was not downscaled.

In challenging the policy which did not cater for alternatives, Ismail said she perceived the fact that she now had to do her old job as a demotion.

The hospital said Ismail was required to see about 40 patients a day – mostly in ICU. If she was allowed to wear replaceable sleeves, she would have to change them 40 times a day which would cost millions of rand a year.

Ismail said she did not come into physical contact with the patients as she kept her laptop on a trolley and only spoke to the patients. Thus, she said, her sleeves would not touch them

Commissioner Grobler, however, said there were more than Muslim 400 workers nationally for the hospital group and if an exception was made for Ismail, it had to be made for everyone.

She said in as far as Ismail claimed the policy discriminated against her, the “discrimination” was justified in this instance and thus not unfair.