UK: Doctors will be encouraged to issue fewer sick notes

John Mac

John Mac

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Doctors will be encouraged to issue fewer sick notes and instead help employees carry on working in bid to reverse the rise in workers who stay home due to long-term ailments

Treasury weighing up new approach to tackle Britain's long-term sickness crisis Doctors to be encouraged to recommend employees remain in labour market

Doctors will be urged to issue fewer sick notes and instead help employees carry on working under plans being considered for next month’s Budget, it was reported last night.

The Treasury is said to be weighing up a new approach to reverse the rise in staff who are off work with long-term sickness.

Instead of allowing a sick person to stop working entirely, doctors would be encouraged to recommend ways they can still go to work so that they do not drop out of the labour market.

The number of staff signed off work with long-term health problems leapt from 1.95million in 2019 to 2.32million in 2022, figures show.

A Government source told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The mental health benefits of work are well-established. We want to do all we can to encourage as many people as possible to stay in work with the relevant support in place.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rse-rise-workers-long-term-sick.html#comments



 
Simon Wessely might well have something to do with this I guess.

The mental health benefits of working in the NHS are so great that everyone is leaving.
Redeploying people is surely the business of employers, not doctors.
This will be yet another incentive for GPs to quit.
It is hard to see how this can be anything other than a policy driving itself into the ground and an electoral rout.
 
“Doctors would be encouraged” could mean anything from incentivisation and targets, to formal policies, to guidance.

The lack of specifics likely indicates kite flying, or performative policymaking designed to position the governing party as tough on malingerers, for voters who like that sort of thing (voters who don’t being essentially a lost cause).

There is no reason to assign everything that we don’t like to the bogeyman Wesseley. His continued presence in Whitehall is a symptom rather than a cause of the grim direction of policy travel.
 
"The mental health benefits of work are well-estsblised".

Unless, your employer or some of your co-workers are bullies, sexually harass or assault you, your work load is unrealistic, you work in a sweat shop, you work in unsafe/unregulated conditions, you are expected to work for low, or no pay, your work is demeaning, you are under employed,
and/or, you have a long-term debilitating illness.
 
The consequence of this initiative could work against employers accommodating people with ‘long term’ health conditions and force suffers to make the decision sooner rather than later to stop working completely. A system that does not recognise individual variation could much more quickly force people with conditions like ME or Long Covid permanently out of the work force.
 
This is just clickbait pretending to be journalism - the key phrase = "A Government source told The Daily Telegraph" i.e this is Government kite flying via friendly publication - the original article is here: Sick note crackdown to get more people back into work

There's deliberate journalistic created confusion between the number used - total number of people not working because of illness at 2.3 million and the number of people who have a job but who are currently signed off for more than seven days from work. The latter is a much smaller number and it is people in that category only who need a Fitnote for their employer. People on Long Term illness benefits do not have to see their GP for Fitnotes (or the long ago abandoned sicknotes).

Prior to Covid the UK had multi decadal decline in the number of days lost to sickness: Sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2021

Edited to add some missing words !
 
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Sean said:
Through work to health.
This has Wessely's fingerprints all over it.
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Unfortunately I think it will be somebody else's fingerprints on it, but they will have been told to do it by Wessely.

I see Wessely as a Moriarty type character. Always in the background pulling the strings but his name not appearing anywhere.

Sherlock Holmes:
"First mistake, James Moriarty isn't a man at all. He's a spider. A spider at the center of a web. Criminal web with a thousand threads and he knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances."
 
livinglighter said:
It's almost as if I can smell the man.

If the bogeyman were to take off its suit it would reveal Wesseley, I am certain of it. :emoji_spy:
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Wesseley, or indeed any individual is unnecessary to explain any of this - which is just the usual (for the UK) playing out of a particular political perspective associated with one or more wings of the Governing Party, prompted or promoted by an aligned media company story telling in a style and on subjects that appeal to the prejudices of its paying audience.

No need for bogeypersons when the grubby normal is all that's required to explain the story.

livinglighter said:
On a serious note, tough times ahead for all afflicted. Long Covid is a risk to the UK's GDP. Other than better attempts at trying to keep the sick in employment how else can economic fall be mitigated?
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UK GDP is probably outside the forum's remit, but I think we are a long way from seeing PASC/Long COVID from having a major ongoing impact on the UK economy, the current picture is of PASC disproportionately affecting those who are already economically inactive - pre existing illness, retired and/or approaching retirement. https://www.s4me.info/threads/offic...on-in-the-uk-updates.20817/page-5#post-460683

Government anxiety about economic inactivity has its roots in much larger political and societal changes and (IMO) we should see references to the 'long term ill' as more about scapegoating and misdirection than about economic and social reality.
 
John Mac said:
A Government source told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The mental health benefits of work are well-established
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A government source, uh? Some, S Wessely, perhaps? No, that's way too close, let's go with Simon W. Yes, that should do it.

Famously, most people on their death bed regret not having worked more. They wished they had worked harder, longer hours, farther away from home, separated by long commutes and a very rigid, unforgiving culture that demands more, more, MORE.

Ironically this as good as it gets as a textbook example of why correlation is not causation and the danger not caring about causality creates. Sick people can't work, or work less, usually linearly with their level of disability. So healthy people tend to work more. Therefore work is good for health. This is absurd, asinine, foolish to the extreme. Lots of people like working, but what they don't like is working too much, taking time away from what is actually important. It's obviously false, no one takes this argument seriously. This is policy, politics putting business before lives.

In reality for a strong majority of people work is toxic and significantly lowers their quality of life. Better work wouldn't be as much of a problem, but jobs are rarely chosen to that level, most people have limited options that end up making work terrible for their health. This is especially true in healthcare, which has a horribly toxic workplace culture.

Healthcare built on lies. How could anyone even expect this work for even a minute? The very premise is delusional. We even know for a fact that it's disastrous, the rise in what is often referred to as a "mental health crisis" perfectly matches the rise of psychosomatic medicine and the idea that for mental health, all you have to do is a bunch of useless services while giving yourselves awards. They seem to think they can wing this with zero effort, "just see a professional", as if they aren't stuck in a similar place medicine was at the time of the Humours.

What a bleak worldview. It sees no value in human life, in what makes life worth living. Nope, just work, work and work some more so that rich people's yacht money can keep growing.
 
Spread your bug to the whole workforce - increased overall sick absence- creating unnecessary staffing shortfalls affecting productivity

risks of individual errors by people working while ill - at simplest employers risk losing money through mistakes - at worst health and safety errors can risk injury and death - who would be criminally liable under the health and safety legislation?
 
NelliePledge said:
Spread your bug to the whole workforce - increased overall sick absence- creating unnecessary staffing shortfalls affecting productivity

risks of individual errors by people working while ill - at simplest employers risk losing money through mistakes - at worst health and safety errors can risk injury and death - who would be criminally liable under the health and safety legislation?
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Good point @NelliePledge

The Canadian Institute of Health Information found 1 in 17 hospital stays in 2021-2022, (a very stressful time of overwork and illness for health care workers), resulted in error:

https://www.cihi.ca/en/patient-harm-in-canadian-hospitals-it-does-happen

According to a CBC Radio program, this number does not include errors in emergency rooms, or those where nurses were involved.
 
John Mac said:
Doctors will be encouraged to issue fewer sick notes and instead help employees carry on working in bid to reverse the rise in workers who stay home due to long-term ailments

Treasury weighing up new approach to tackle Britain's long-term sickness crisis Doctors to be encouraged to recommend employees remain in labour market

Doctors will be urged to issue fewer sick notes and instead help employees carry on working under plans being considered for next month’s Budget, it was reported last night.

The Treasury is said to be weighing up a new approach to reverse the rise in staff who are off work with long-term sickness.

Instead of allowing a sick person to stop working entirely, doctors would be encouraged to recommend ways they can still go to work so that they do not drop out of the labour market.

The number of staff signed off work with long-term health problems leapt from 1.95million in 2019 to 2.32million in 2022, figures show.

A Government source told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The mental health benefits of work are well-established. We want to do all we can to encourage as many people as possible to stay in work with the relevant support in place.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rse-rise-workers-long-term-sick.html#comments
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Isn't it a bit back to front (if this is actually new at all, because I'm pretty sure this is what has been the case for the last decde + anyway)

Shouldn't the treasury be focused on making sure employers make said adjustments and ensuring that the job is safe for the needs of the employee (without the employee having to fight for that as well as recover and do any work they might one day be capable of etc) - and 'helping' the employers to do this in good time ie prior to employee returning?

I'm intrigued whether where adjustments aren't met and someone cannot return this is categorised differently either - does anyone know?

And also resolving the issue of workload associated with employees actually asking for these, as it quite often is made a lot of work - there should be a limit on back-and-forth for someone to achieve this given thy are already ill, and will also have their day job which they might well be more vulnerable in (because let's face it the facts are that ill people are more vulnerable to being sacked whether they are doing their job as well as anyone else or even better), and will have medical and other admin related to their illness, and are seen as 'needing to show they are getting better'

There might be an issue that fit notes cause regarding pay - if someone is given reduced hours as an adjustment that does not mean they get sick pay in the way they would if they were off for the entire week. ie in many workplaces those off sick for an entire week get full pay or whatever their sickness pay equivalent, those with fit note get paid only for the hours that they do - and you can see someone with ME/CFS having to 'dip their toe' for 2hrs a week or something and that meaning instead of getting any sick pay they get thrust into financial consequences of being paid 2hrs a week.

And of course combining the two points above, having many more hours a week on top dealing with the additional work of what might 'come with' 'being managed' etc

I'm not sure that this is the likely way to mean people are off for less time, more like the other way around unless they are looking at these - and any other suggestions/issues anyone else might flag - are the focus instead?
 
Working days lost to sickness hits record high
More sick days were taken last year than the first year of lockdown, with official figures showing the number of working days lost to sickness at a record high.

An estimated 185.6 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in 2022, higher than 2020 and every year during the decade before, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It means that last year was the worst year for sick days since 1995.

The number of days lost to sickness absence remained relatively stable in the decade leading up to the pandemic, with 138.2 million days lost in 2019.

Last year saw the highest sickness absence rate in 18 years, above both 2020 and 2021, with 2.6 per cent of working hours lost in 2022 compared to 2.7 per cent in 2004.

Minor illnesses, including coughs, colds, flu and diarrhoea, were the most common reason given for absences in 2022 (29.3 per cent), taking over the “other” category which includes Covid-19.

Respiratory conditions also overtook mental health as the fourth most common reason for absence in 2022, the ONS said, accounting for more than twice the proportion they did before the pandemic.
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Working days lost to sickness hits record high (msn.com)
 
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