Anyone who is that steadfastly religious should not be practicing medicine in the first place... they should just pray the sick away!

All I got to say is, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I'm sorry.

Universal precautions and proper medical hygiene is not conditional, period.

Each time I read about Europe's Muslim immigrants, I want to go hug a hispanic (though we should still manage immigration, of course).

You are entitled to your religious beliefs, but you are not entitled to have other compromise their health and safety for your religious beliefs.

Time to get a new job.

lets see, they refuse to follow safety laws?, only one answer here, boot out the door, I dont give a fuck if theyre muslim, hindu or atheist, brown, black, white, green or purple

show them the door.

Buh-bye.

They're not doing it out of modesty, you know. There's nothing in Islam that requires such a thing. They're doing it to assert their presence, and, like young hotheads everywhere, push the boundaries to find out where they really lie. This is, obviously, a Western trait, not an Islamic one. And there's no harm at all in saying no.

This is so infuriating. How could anyone call themselves a medical professional, a healer, and yet not adhere to basic laws of hygiene?

Perhaps they should just use leeches and blood-letting and leave the practice of medicine to those who want to ensure their patients won't become even sicker from a preventable, drug-resistant infection for some primitive, misinterpreted custom.

I think the real concern here is that any men working in that same operating room might be so distracted by the sight of all that exposed female forearm flesh that they will make life-threatening mistakes. You do not want an assisting surgeon with fogged up glasses, tongue hanging out, and a cartoon steam whistle popping out of his head while you're lying there on the operating table.

The lady doctors have no right to inflict this kind of sexual tension on their male colleagues with their shameless displays. Besleeve thyself, strumpet!

Well, hell, flamingbanjo, if the patient is female, they're going to be seeing a lot more of her -- they're going to be looking at her INSIDES. How horny does that make you? Wheet!

Why does the left over in Europe trip over themselves trying to appease these religious lunatics? What percentage of the European population does the Islamic community have to reach?

@11:

there's not much left of the appeasing left in europe. i believe that very soon we'll see repatriation campaigns & a very powerful secular anti-muslim movement.

perhaps they could go to an islamic medical school, practice in an islamic hospital, and have only islamic patients.

those patients would understand why their surgeon was only allowed to operate with his right hand.

Is no one else disturbed by the thought that they are just NOW requiring doctors and nurses to scrub above the wrist? I thought that was common practice.

But will they distribute morning after pills?

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that this case is an(other) isolated incident, sensationally reported in the UK tabloid press and blown out of proportion to fan the flames of religious intolerance in a Europe already torn by ethnic strife, misunderstanding and anger toward immigrant populations. Why bother to get to the bottom of a perceived problem, though -- just go ahead and tar an entire itinerant community to make it easier to cheer on their exclusion and ostracizing from society at large.

When I was in med school and residency, there were some very religous classmates who were allowed to take their boards a day early if they were held on the sabbath, which was Saturday for Seventh Day Adventists and orthodox Jews. However, these classmates NEVER got out of taking call on Saturdays (I don't think they even tried) because it would have pissed off way too many people. They knew when not to push it too far, unlike these anti-handwashing chicks.

What happens if a Muslim female gets breast cancer and needs a mastectomy? She shouldn't be flashing her breast during surgery. How do they dispose of the breast tissue without anyone seeing it?

Banna, some female muslim patients refuse to have surgery if there is a man in the room. They use female surgeons, request female anesthesiologists, and if it can't be done they go elsewhere. Most of them end up sucking it up though if it is simply too difficult to provide a totally female OR for them.

I guess I don't see why we have to make any accommodation for religious belief. You choose to believe something, you live with the consequences. If that means you don't get to work as a nurse, or a pharmacists, or a taxi dirve, too bad. I owe you and your religion nothing nor do you owe my beliefs anything. I don't ask that you keep your churches away from my kids, or that you not wear your turban in public.

I am not saying that we should outlaw anything or discriminate on the basis of religion, just that we need not make special accommodation for an individual becasue they choose to believe something.

could someone point out the verse in the koran that requires this DEGREE of modesty?

i'd read the koran myself, but i've got to get through the bible first, and every page i read pisses me off to the point where i've got to set it down for a year.

@10: Jesus! Some of us are reading this at work!

@14 If you'd been to Britain, you'd be less surprised about their new adherence to above the wrist scrubbing.

On to the subject at hand though, in the US protections for religious practice only go far enough to protect those practices that will not interfere with the core activities of a job, and include hygiene. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Domino's Pizza, which requires that all employees be clean shaven, to prevent hair from getting into pizzas, after a Sikh employee sued. He offered to wear a hair net over his beard, but this compromise was rejected and he was fired.

Frankly, I think people who make demands like that are both assholes and poseurs. The asshole part is obvious, but the poseur part is, "I'm so devout that I'll follow the most minute rules of my religion, but I'm not willing to actually sacrifice anything of importance for my faith." Well, fuck that. There have been a number of jobs I wanted that I couldn't have because they required working on Shabbat. You don't hear me bitching. These assholes shouldn't either.

@17 Also, doctors, police officers, soldiers, and the like are permitted by halacha (Jewish religious law) to work on Shabbat. Almost any tenet of Jewish law can be broken to save a life, and medical work most definitely qualifies. Even if they had requested Shabbat off on religious grounds, they would have been wrong.

Fire them.

Period.

Half of all deaths in hospitals are from lack of cleaniness, and most fatal food poisonings are the same.

"all female OR"
I love this. Religions assume lesbians to be non-existant as it is, I wonder what sort of disruption it would cause if someone poitnted out to them that the LESBIANS are whom they should ve covering up their sexy, sexy forearms from.

Under a strict interpretation of the law, if a male surgeon sees a female patient naked and is not her husband, then she is an adulterer and must be stoned to death.

Medical school and residency are basically designed to find out just how low, dirty, disgusting and desperate you are willing to get to be a doctor. No degree of humilliation, tiredness, physical filth, hunger or suicidal thoughts are ever enough. Surgeons are particularly apt at making you feel less than stept on shit.
No short sleeved scrubs in the dead of winter? No scrubbing in freezing water up to the elbow?? Ok, NO SURGERY. They won't ever operate even on a vermin. And believe me, if they are changing their elbows for the inmense feeling that is cutting live human flesh... well... they don't deserve to be in.
(first year resident tinydoc creeps back to her hole under the operating table to lick the floor)

what a bunch of conceited cows. Like anybody would get turned on by their ashy elbows. how many times have you heard a guy say "Oh wow, her elbows are making me so horny." never...

Religion taking precedence over science?

I've never heard of that before.

@27 - it's not in the Koran.