A tribunal has ordered a medical diagnostic clinic to pay compensation totalling \u20ac12,000 to a south Dublin GP and her elderly mother over the \u201cdemeaning and disrespectful\u201d conduct of a receptionist nearly three years ago. <\/p>\n
It follows complaints under the Employment Equality Act 1998 against Affidea Diagnostics Ireland Ltd by Dr Shereen Gul and her mother, Mehr Un Nisa. <\/p>\n
In decisions published on Tuesday, a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator recorded that Mehr Un Nisa was \u201ca 75-year-old Pakistani lady who was visibly timid and frail\u201d with \u201cno English to speak of\u201d. <\/p>\n
She was in Ireland visiting her daughter, a general practitioner in Saggart in Dublin, when she went for a scan at an Affidea radiography clinic in Dundrum, the WRC heard. <\/p>\n
There was \u201canxiety\u201d on both sides after a mix-up about slotting Mehr Un Nisa in for a cancelled appointment the previous month led to a disputed interaction and the accusation that Gul gave \u201cabuse\u201d to clinic staff. <\/p>\n
This was strongly denied by Gul, who had initiated defamation proceedings against Affidea when the WRC was hearing the case. <\/p>\n
Gul said her mother was from a village in a tribal area in northern Pakistan where people traditionally use just one name. <\/p>\n
On November 4th, 2023, she said, a receptionist, Karen Fitzpatrick, on seeing the name said: \u201cOh, what kind of a name is that and what is the surname?\u201d Gul said. <\/p>\n
She went on to say twice that the name \u201cdoesn\u2019t make sense\u201d when Gul tried to explain, and asked Gul to produce an identity document for her mother, the witness added. <\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick then asked Gul: \u201cDoes your mom know any English?\u201d and when told Mehr Un Nisa had only a few words, asked, \u201cHow come she has no English?\u201d Gul said. <\/p>\n
She was then told she couldn\u2019t enter a changing area to assist her mother for \u201cinfection control\u201d reasons. She had been let in on previous visits, and saw other patients enter with family members while she waited, she said. <\/p>\n
The receptionist, Fitzpatrick, denied telling Gul that her mother\u2019s name \u201cdidn\u2019t make sense\u201d but said she \u201cneeded to check the spelling\u201d. She asked about English because there was a safety questionnaire to fill out, she added. <\/p>\n
When counsel for the complainant Vincent Nolan, appearing instructed by Powderly Solicitors, put it to the witness that there she had \u201csimply decided to be awkward\u201d, Fitzpatrick said: \u201cNo, I was just doing my job correctly.\u201d <\/p>\n
Adjudicator Patricia Owens decided Fitzpatrick\u2019s evidence was not credible and decided in favour of Gul\u2019s account of the questioning about Mehr Un Nisa\u2019s name. <\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick was \u201cdemeaning and disrespectful\u201d towards the women and went beyond what was required to identify her, Owens wrote. The receptionist\u2019s actions were \u201cnotably different to how Irish patients were treated\u201d, the adjudicator added. <\/p>\n
Refusing to let Gul into the changing area was discriminatory on the same basis, she added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tribunal has ordered a medical diagnostic clinic to pay compensation totalling \u20ac12,000 to a south Dublin GP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-611476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}