O my holy sleeves!
When should ‘religious beliefs’ trump medical precautions? Hmm, let’s see. Never.
Many Muslim women all over the UK could be at risk of losing their jobs after the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, introduced the “bare below the elbow” policy. This policy was first introduced in January 2008 and stated that, when any member of staff is in contact with a patient, they must have their full arm from the elbow and below completely bare.
That doesn’t put Muslim women at risk of losing their jobs; it puts them at risk of having to bare their arms below the elbow when in contact with patients. In other words it presents them with a not very onerous job requirement that is in place in an attempt to prevent lethal infections. In other words, big fucking deal. Some jobs come with requirements of that kind; that’s just a fact of life. You can’t dress any old way you want to when you’re working with food, for example. Religion doesn’t give people the right to endanger the health of other people. You can’t be a surgeon and say your religion forbids you to scrub your hands, and that’s all there is to it. There is no human right to ignore hygiene regulations in a hospital. Suck it up.
Ayesha believed the dismissal was unethical as it violated her equality and diversity human rights…Ayesha described the “continuous nightmares” she suffered regarding the situation and upon her dismissal how she was “emotionally torn apart”. She feels viciously discriminated against, and this incident has left her seriously doubting any future job security. Ayesha feels shocked that she was forced to choose between her religious beliefs and her livelihood. She hopes to “prevent the policy from being universally applied, so other Muslim women do not experience the same trauma.”
Trauma nothing. If you work in a hospital, you are inevitably going to have various dress and hygiene requirements. Period. Grow up, enter the real world, have some sense, deal with it. And bag the self-pity, too.
Can I say it? Oh my God! When does this nonsense come to an end? Where does religious idiocy reach its limit? Can’t we just tell people to stop with the cultural trauma rubbish and fuck off? Fuck!
I know I am beginning to come across shrill but I’m sick to death of this sort of thing. Co-opting Western tolerance and hard-won rights to push for Islamic exceptionalism is infuriating. It’s the very thing we deplore in any workplace when our fellow workers whine and insist on making themselves special cases. This, of course, is worse because our co-workers’ appeals are generally based on simple human selfishness or laziness. This, however, is part of a program for ultimately reording western society and “norms”. (Hmmm…now where did I just read about respecting “norms”…Oh yes, that recent legislative shout-down where the 5 murdered Muslim women were concerned.)
I don’t care if people think I’m an Islamaphobe – I am (though Islam is certainly not my only religious “beef” merely the one that most concerns me). Nor do I care if others think I’m a Nazi or mullah – I’m not and don’t care to defend myself against stupidity.
What I am is grateful to others for writing books and hosting websites about these matters. I suffer no illusions that I am being heard beyond such venues but throw my voice in with those who also unhappily feel the burden of saying what must be said even while we can’t believe it’s us speaking given our liberal, if not radical, pasts. But so it goes in these strange days.
B.
Nothing wrong with being an islamaphobe Brian,we live in a world of self exploding doctors so it strikes me that it is a handy survival tool.
From http://www.religiousworlds.com/mandalam/naked.htm
“In some of the oldest scriptural texts of India, we find references to naked saints and sannyasins. In the Rig Veda of Vedic Aryan tradition reference is made to them but worded in such a way that shows the Brahmins did not properly understand them but were held in wonder by the spiritual and psychic powers some of them possessed.
“These naked Sadhus belonged to the non-Vedic or pre-Aryan religion which flourished long before the Vedic religion was introduced into India…”
Sadhuism has been long overdue for a revival. As it happens, on matters of dress code we Sadhus lie at the opposite end of the spectrum from chadoric Islam.
As a true Sadhu believer and devout practitioner (not to be confused with the less devout modern Sadhus who have fallen into heresy), I claim my right to not be discriminated against in my field of work, which happens to be in public relations.
I hope in time to land a job as a TV presenter.
violated
nightmares
suffered
emotionally torn apart
viciously discriminated against
shocked
trauma
Why all this overblown language? The woman has just been asked to roll up her sleeves.
Ian as a modern Sadhu practitioner I feel violated emotionally torn apart
viciously discriminated against and
shocked and traumitised by your comment.
Richard, the choice is yours: continue in heresy and error, or repent and return to the One True Faith, which is the Original Unblemished and Infallible Orthodox Church of True Sadhu.
Anyone ever heard of gloves and protective clothing? I manage a busy teaching laboratory with classes of up to 120 2nd and 3rd year medical and science students who regularly are in contact with biohazard materials. Bare from the elbows down? You have to be joking!
David wrote:
>Anyone ever heard of gloves and protective clothing? I manage a busy teaching laboratory with classes of up to 120 2nd and 3rd year medical and science students who regularly are in contact with biohazard materials. Bare from the elbows down? You have to be joking!< Maybe I haven’t understood David’s point, but isn’t the point of nurses and doctors having bare arms that these can be easily and repeatedly washed between close contacts with patients, whereas clothes can’t?
@David,
Do you think the requirements and rules of conduct for pasient handling at a modern hospital are based on some fashion whims or based on empirical knowledge (of how to minimise morbidity/mortality)?
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
“Anyone ever heard of gloves and protective clothing?”
Yes. I’ve also heard that people use their hands to put such items on and to take them off. So clean hands are still important to avoid contamination.
Teaching labs aren’t at risk of MRSA or c. difficile transmission. If they were, the standards of hygiene would be different.
I don’t know exactly what a therapeutic radiographer is – maybe like the women who drive the mammogram torture machines in the US? Or the ones who aim the rays at tumors? And I’m not sure how one becomes a respected therapeutic radiographer. Nonetheless, even though I don’t know the details, I suspect that this woman must have had some kind of medical training.
Maybe she was absent or not paying attention the day her class learned about the history of scientific medicine and the discovery of bacteria and other icky shit. Maybe she missed the amusing unit on iatrogenesis. Also maybe she has forgotten the whole riveting business of judging the quality of evidence.
She’d be a lot more credible if she had tackled the medical issues, and if she had asked “Where is the evidence that ‘bare below the elbow’ actually makes a difference in mortality and morbidity?”
So this one does not earn any credibility points, but neither does Johnson earn any with the rule in the first place. Someone should get it straight. No one is making a good argument here. Even though the article makes it sound like there is one to be made. What bad arguing. As usual. Sigh.
This sounds like those “conscience clauses” that U.S. Christians use to get out of dispensing birth control.
I really hate it when religious fundamentalists co-opt the rhetoric of tolerance.
True enough about Johnson. Apparently lots of people think there’s no evidence that bare arms will help.
Oh, so it’s acceptable to have MRSA in hospitals but not teaching labs? Hand washing will not stop MRSA transmission, nor will alcohol-based cleansers. MRSA appears everywhere, so good hygiene practices are essential. Continual hand/arm washing is a good practice, but not the cure-all that hospital administrators (as opposed to infection control experts) think it is. The reasons gloves should be worn is to protect both the practitioner and the patient.
Gloves are also not sufficient. If you remove a contaminated glove with a hand then use that hand to put on another glove, you risk spreading the contamination. And sleeves touch gloves and patients.
So washing and rolling up sleeves isn’t a cure-all, no, but then nor are gloves. The important point is that this should be argued on the basis of the evidence, like we are, not on the basis of people’s sudden political assertions of faith.
In short: I want to receive full pay for the job I chose not to perform. Unless you pay up, I’ll sue you for discrimination.
“Hand washing will not stop MRSA transmission, nor will alcohol-based cleansers.”
Bollocks. Won’t stop C. diff. but MRSA is a completely feeble bug very vulnerable to hand washing and alco-rub.
A ‘therapeutic radiographer’ will be someone who drives the therapeutic radiography machines (i.e. administers radiotherapy).
The bare below the elbows policy is a recommendation from central government that has been adopted as official policy by some trusts. Which means in practice that consultants continue to do what they like (and wear ties and suits when examining patients) while everyone else is obliged to uncover their arms and not wear a watch and other such rules (except you can wear a wedding ring in a pointless sop to married people).
Frankly I doubt a radiographer is going to be a massive source of infection risk, and this requirement was brought in very recently with little evidence base. On the other hand there are plenty of cases (such as junior doctors) where this rule probably should be enforced rigidly.
Ian,
Bad example.
Why would you need justify your nakedness with religious belief?
Why not just go naked?
Re; Ian’s link of 07:58:52 – I read in the Naked Saints of India that “It was the Muslims who seem to have first used the word Hindu and therefore it is a very recent addition to Indian words”. I could not envisage Irish monks going around in the same naked manner – as the climate alone would not allow for same.