Staff physicians, interns and residents, and hospital volunteers: are they protected from employment discrimination?

Traditional notions of the employment relationship between a hospital and its volunteers, residents, interns, and physicians having staff privileges are not decisive in determining whether the worker is protected from unlawful employment discrimination. Instead, hospital executives and attorneys must look to the totality of the circumstances of the work relationship in order to make this determination. Hospital volunteers are usually not protected by Title VII, but under some circumstances they may be; residents and interns are probably always protected; and physicians seeking staff privileges probably are protected, if the denial of staff privileges interferes with the physician's employment relationship with his or her direct employer, or if the granting of staff privileges to those who served in the hospital's residency program is a well-established routine practice, regularly followed by the hospital.