Pre-employment medical testing - disclosing to the physician

[cai1987]

I've recently taken a new job that falls under the category of "hospital vendor". I'm required to provide my childhood vaccination records, which I don't have and would be in my old name anyway, or I can take a blood test that determines I have the relevant antibodies. I also need a tetanus vaccination and a drug screening. None of that is a

Comments

[slinkslowdown]

+1

And I'm pretty sure doctor-patient privilege prevents a doctor from disclosing anything you tell them, outside of, say, implicating that you're actively suicidal/homicidal and telling law enforcement or mental health people that.

Any decent doctor who doesn't want to get sued or lose their license isn't going to go around spilling information about patients.

[ltrossier]

I was just in this same situation and had to also do a pre-employment physical. I was super nervous, but just decided to keep quiet unless something popped up where I needed to say something. I wish I spent less time stressing, because I never had to disclose anything to anyone! I wouldn't worry..

[cai1987]

Thanks for the reassurances, guys. I'm just super paranoid about this job - it's the first position I've held since college (5 years ago) that's actually related to what I want to do with my life, and something I could see doing as a career - and I don't want anything getting in the way.

[varanus]

Unless they're being done for court-ordered reasons or certain kinds of DOT positions, drug tests are not observed. They do various kinds of security checks (depending in how paranoid the employer is-I had to empty my pockets and pull up my pants legs since I was wearing baggy pants), give you a cup, and send you to a bathroom where they've turned off the water and dyed the toilet water blue. You go in, shut the door, do your thang, and give the person the cup. They look at it to make sure it's piss and not, say Mountain Dew-they may actually shake it to ensure that it's not carbonated!-take the temperature to make sure it came out of your body, and send it off to wherever. Then you pick up your pocket materials and go home. I would not pack if I were you, because one relatively famous way for men to cheat the drug test is by using essentially a semi-realistic STP filled with someone else's clean urine

[cai1987]

I didn't even think about the possibility of the drug test being observed, but I'm glad it isn't, since that would be extraordinarily awkward even if I weren't trans*.