A Belarusian NHS doctor who admitted struggling with “small talk” and the British fascination with the weather has lost her unfair dismissal case after being fired for communication issues. Dr Maryna Anatolyeva’s £100,000 lawsuit against the health service was rejected by an employment judge, who found she was sacked because she “failed to meet the standard required”.
The 47-year-old anaesthetist was on a postgraduate training programme supported by NHS England between August 2018 and August 2022, working at several hospitals across the North West of England, including Royal Preston Hospital and Royal Blackburn Hospital. She argued that she was treated less favourably because of her race, as a Russian-speaking person from Belarus, and because of a disability, namely neurodiversity, but both claims were dismissed at an early stage.
An earlier employment tribunal hearing in Manchester was told that Dr Anatolyeva herself accepted that she found certain social interactions difficult. “In particular she did not find it easy to engage in ‘small talk’, and could not understand the British fascination with the weather,” the tribunal heard. “She believes this may be cultural, as when she was growing up in Belarus people did not chat about such a topic.”
At a later tribunal, it was heard that multiple experienced consultants felt her communication, leadership and teamworking skills were “not to the standard expected”. Concerns were first raised at an appraisal in July 2021, and after failing to improve, she was dropped from the training programme in October 2022. The tribunal accepted she had received positive feedback on occasions, but there was a “pervasive theme” of negative feedback.
Dr Anatolyeva also claimed her female boss, Dr Karen Butler, had told her that being a consultant was not suitable because she was “a single parent and from different cultural background”. Dr Butler “emphatically denied” making such comments, and the tribunal found her evidence more convincing. Employment Judge Callum Cowx said: “She failed to meet the standard required to complete a long and highly demanding training programme.”
