{"id":463685,"date":"2026-03-08T04:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/463685\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T04:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:08:13","slug":"woman-wins-7k-payout-from-cancer-hospital-after-she-complained-her-anxiety-affected-her-ability-to-give-concise-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/463685\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman wins \u00a37k payout from cancer hospital after she complained her anxiety affected her ability to give concise answers"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman has won a multi-thousand pound payout from a cancer hospital after she complained that her anxiety affected her ability to give concise answers in a job interview.<\/p>\n

The prospective employee, Anahita Rezaei, applied for a role at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in London in February 2024.<\/p>\n

Applying as a Pathology Operations Manager, another candidate scored higher during their 40-minute interview, but turned down the role.<\/p>\n

It was then offered to a candidate other than Ms Rezaei.<\/p>\n

After not being offered the role, she then complained her anxiety disorder made her unable to provide concise answers under pressure.<\/p>\n

An employment tribunal then found that Royal Marsden, a specialist cancer hospital, had failed in its duty to make reasonable adjustments.<\/p>\n

The court found that the hospital should have reviewed whether her disability had impacted her interview scores before offering the position to another person.<\/p>\n

Ms Razaei, who was working as Associate Director of Laboratory Medicine at Royal Brompton NHS Foundation Trust at the time, had ticked “I do not wish to disclose my disabilities” while applying for the role.<\/p>\n

\"Royal<\/p>\n

Ms Razaei applied for the role of Pathology Operations Manager at Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

The tribunal noted she provided no medical evidence that her anxiety affected her performance and did not request any special accommodation when invited to do so during the interview process.<\/p>\n

She said she had not ticked the box in error, the employment panel heard.<\/p>\n

She did declare that she had a “mental health condition” on a different drop-down menu on the job application.<\/p>\n

Two of the three interviewers had ranked Ms Razeai as the second and third best candidate, but the hospital’s director of operations Judith Lucas’s scores and overall summary sheet were not seen in the tribunal.<\/p>\n

\"HM<\/p>\n

The tribunal found the cancer hospital made ‘no steps’ to accommodate Ms Razeai<\/p>\n

| GETTY<\/p>\n

The tribunal found this to be a “serious failing”, as it meant the employment panel was unable to determine who came second.<\/p>\n

There was no evidence that the whole application was considered and the interview was functionally a tiebreaker, the employment panel said.<\/p>\n

The tribunal also said the interview process was “flawed” as it marked question by question, “rather than competency by competency”.<\/p>\n

Ms Razeai was told in her rejection email that she was “considered appointable”, but the candidate who was offered the role had answered questions more directly.<\/p>\n

She responded, attributing her inability to answer questions directly to her mental health disability.<\/p>\n

She said her anxiety “can affect clarity of mind and speech under pressure, particularly in interview situations”.<\/p>\n

She raised the issue in April 2024 to the hospital’s director of workforce Krystyna Ruszkiewicz, adding the interview had started five minutes late, but did not receive a reply until June that year.<\/p>\n

The tribunal said the hospital took “no steps” to address the “potential unfairness”, and Ms Razeai, who represented herself at the three-day hearing, was awarded \u00a36,000 compensation for injury to feelings, plus \u00a3840 interest and \u00a3880 in preparation costs.<\/p>\n

She did not receive compensation for her other claims of disability discrimination and unfavourable treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman has won a multi-thousand pound payout from a cancer hospital after she complained that her anxiety…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[35884,59,102,388,50,56,54,55,46278],"class_list":["post-463685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-across-the-uk","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-london","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-woke-madness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}