EMPLOYMENT LAWYER: FIT NOTE SYSTEM COMPROMISED BY DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIPS

SAS DANIELS LLP

PRESS RELEASE

April 08, 2010.

EMPLOYMENT LAWYER: FIT NOTE SYSTEM COMPROMISED BY DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIPS.

Long-established doctor-patient relationships could compromise the effectiveness of newly-launched “fit note” legislation.

The Statement of Fitness for Work is designed to get employees back into the work environment after a period of illness, but leading employment lawyer Jonathan Whittaker says that it will make no difference to addictively workshy staff who have built long-standing relationships with their GP.

“There’s a hard-core of continually questionably ill and injured who are capable of delivering the performance of a heroically incapacitated CSI Miami shooting victim on the stage of the GP’s surgery,” said Jonathan Whittaker, Employment Partner at SAS Daniels LLP, one of the North West’s biggest law firms.

“Over a considerable period they have managed to convince their friendly neighbourhood doctor that they endure a life of marginal health, and pledge to make huge efforts to get to work when they’re ‘well enough’. This is a variation upon the oft-opined brilliance of the criminal mind.

“The vast majority of people deal with illness and injury very openly and honestly – but I am engaged in continual discussion with employers who are handcuffed to a minority of employees who live in an untouchable ill-health limbo in which the alleged patient describes a difficult-to-diagnose condition of being ‘out of sorts’ or having an unidentifiable physical affliction or injury, and who have fine-tuned the art of convincing affrontery if questioned by either employer or doctor.

“In those circumstances, the likelihood of a GP saying their patient is really fit for work if the patient in front of them insists they are not has to be in question.

“Doctors will have to exercise an enormous amount of impartiality, especially where they may have been the patient’s doctor for many years and have perhaps come to view them as being more susceptible to illness than most.

“There is also the complication that GPs will not have any discussion with the employer before filling out the fit note – which means that he or she will have no understanding of the potential roles available within each place of work to be able to suggest alternatives.

“Fit notes will never replace an experienced occupational health report.”

The new fit note is designed to give employees and employers more flexibility in how they deal with sickness absence. This might mean discussing altered hours or a modified work routine. The key is to establish a dialogue between employer, employee and their GP or occupational health specialist.

GPs will be able to offer advice on what work an employee may be able to perform and will be able to suggest adjustments to working arrangements which could be made in order to facilitate an earlier return to work.

Health chiefs say that the isolation brought on by absence from work can lead to stress, depression and anxiety. Getting employees back to work earlier can help promote physical and mental wellbeing and improve organisational effectiveness.

SAS Daniels LLP which has offices in Stockport, Macclesfield, Chester, Congleton and Bramhall.

Ends

Further information:

Iain Macauley or Megan Codling

07788 978800 / 07795 848586

im@pressrelations.co.uk / mc@pressrelations.co.uk / www.sasdaniels.co.uk