UK Medical Employee Faints At Work, Boss Calls Her 'Unprofessional'

In a recent blog, a woman working as a healthcare professional shared her ordeal about how her boss called for a meeting and called her 'unprofessional' after she fainted at work as she wasn't well.  

In a post on the site Mumsnet, the user magentapink3 described her ordeal. She started by asking the question, "Would you consider this unprofessional/would you be annoyed at this?" and continued, "If you were in a healthcare appointment (not whilst getting an invasive or risky treatment btw, and during the talking part of the appointment eg whilst explaining things during a podiatrist, audiologist, optician, dietician etc) and the healthcare professional fainted, would you complain or consider it unprofessional? And if you were the colleagues of the healthcare professional would you think that person should be embarrassed at all or would you judge them for it?"

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The woman narrated how she was in the middle of an appointment with a patient when she realised that she wasn’t feeling well. She then excused herself, telling the patient that one of her colleagues would soon take over. When she stepped out of the room she fainted. While the patient was “lovely about it”, and everything was fine immediately afterwards, she reveals that she was scheduled for a meeting with a “slightly scary boss” to discuss how unprofessional she had been.

"I just wanted to ask here to gauge some opinions on whether I was unprofessional and should prepare for a bollocking or not!" she added. 

Many users on the site, which is known for being the UK’s most popular website for mothers and parents, expressed their outrage at her treatment. One user expressed the thoughts of most commenters best- “I don’t understand. You can’t choose to faint or not faint. What would a ‘professional’ have done according to the person who wants the meeting?” Another user commented, “Not at all! I mean what could you have done to prevent that from happening? Absolutely nothing. Hope you’re feeling better now x.”

A third user suggested that the meeting may not be to lambast her behaviour- rather, it could be to check up on her. Writing, "Good grief, of course, something like that isn’t unprofessional! I hope/assume the boss just wants to check you are ok, discuss potential support if it might happen again, that type of thing." 

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