SPAIN: A judge recognizes the permanent disability of a midwife due to job burn-out

The Court of Social Affairs No. 10 of Gran Canaria Island recognized a total permanent disability giving entitlement to the award of an allocation to a midwife aged 40, considering that the position that she held in the Canary Islands Health Department caused her disorders that led to burn-out.

The midwife had asserted that for the past ten years she was subjected to a work situation – competition with other workers in the Canary Islands Health Department, personal precarity and overwork – that led to several sick leaves. She described her situation to the judge as being “a mixture of burn-out” and harassment by some of her managers. 

The judge considered it proven that the midwife had “experienced a situation of injustice at work during the practice of her job”, accompanied by physical and mental exhaustion, and a feeling of professional frustration. That created for the midwife “a difficulty in adapting to her usual work in a child delivery theatre”. 

“The psychiatric expert concluded as to the existence of exhaustion over an extensive period of time which undermined the person’s defence mechanisms, having consequences outside of her strict work activity, in other areas of her life. This exhaustion was finally transformed into burn-out,” maintained the magistrate Javier Ramón Díez Moro. 

The judge concluded his ruling by saying that maintaining the plaintiff in her current work station prevents her “from developing satisfactorily” and causes her to “relapse”. That is why he considers it admissible to recognize her total permanent disability, which the Social Security system had refused for her.