Employment Law: Fitness for Duty Exams-From Chicago and Cary

Fitness for Duty examinations are requested frequently by both public and private organizations. Sometimes the testing is requested as a pre-employment assessment because of an applicants history of psychiatric illness.

At other times, an employee may have been suspended from work by a healthcare professional, and the employer desires that he undergo an independent evaluation before returning him to work. The employer has the authority to require an independent evaluation because he or she must maintain a safe work environment.

If the employee is in a position of extraordinary responsibility, if serious physical risk exists or if the job itself has any consequences which could be harmful, it is usually considered prudent to obtain such an independent assessment. After all, sometimes an employee is suspended from work because of serious interpersonal problems that have occurred within the workplace which were not resolved in the usual ways.

If you have been researching the psychological assessment process required to assess employment status and fitness for duty, you know by now that it is a lot more complicated than just giving a few tests. This is because when a psychologist or psychiatrist conducts a psychological assessment, he or she may recommend therapy which is intended to resolve the problem.

At the completion of therapy, the next step is often a re-evaluation by an independent mental health evaluator in order to determine whether the employee will be able to return to the same work environment where the alleged problems originally occurred. The evaluating psychologist or psychiatrist should be cognizant of the employees' legal rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and be prepared to recommend reasonable accommodations, if needed.

Independent psychological exams are often prudent for an employer to require. After all,it can be very misleading for an employer to depend exclusively on the opinion of the professional treating the employee; he or she will often just go along with the patients request to return to work.

Why? The reason is that the treating doctor will want to maintain any treatment alliance which exists between them. Treating professionals, as a group, often do not appreciate the power of work environment stresses and the employees rights for reasonable accommodations.

Unfortunately, sometimes doctors recommend accommodations that are unreasonable for the employer to fulfill. Also, they may not know what is considered reasonable accommodation within the context of Title VII and the ADA.

In such cases, it is only prudent for an employer to require that a suspended employee undergo an independent examination by an experienced forensic psychologist or psychiatrist, before returning him to work.