As you may be aware, I was quite ill the other week and ended up spending a night in hospital. Anyway, I’m fine now, but had a follow-up doctor’s appointment today.
One of the things I wanted from the doctor was a sick note for the two days I had off work last week due to my illness. Legally I know I don’t need a doctor’s note because you can self-certify for up to seven days. However, I’d already had some time off for man-flu type things and really wanted to make clear that I wasn’t taking the piss and had been seriously ill.
I explained all this to the doctor and he said, “well I didn’t see you at the time so it would have to be backdated. I can’t give you a backdated sick note on the NHS, but I’m happy to give you a private one. That will cost £10 though.” At this point I’d like to point out that I went to the doctor’s office directly from being discharged from hospital last week partly in order to get this sick note, but the receptionist wouldn’t let me see the doctor then as “sick notes are not emergencies,” instead booking me this appointment 8 days later.
So I go to pay the doctor and only have a £20 note. He rummages in his own wallet to hand me two well worn £5 notes. I don’t get a receipt. Then, “what would you like the note to say?” This experience is making me feel like scum to be honest, but it had to be done, so I went through my whole story again. He actually interrupts my story and says, “..okay that is enough, I will just put vomiting blood, severe pain, hospital attendance, not fit for work, okay?”
Nice doing business with you, doctor. :(
I’m sure there are people all over the country doing this sort of thing to be signed off work for weeks while they do cash in hand work.
Yes, but for an extra hundred quid you could get a lawyer to do the same thing.
A) Stop fucking wasting the NHS’ time & money on this crap with no relevance to healthcare. Your useless appointment stopped someone else having one. I would have warned you and told you not to repeat the request.
B) Self-certification is the law. If you haven’t got the balls to quote the law to your employer then you deserve to pay for wasting professional time.
C) “Man flu” is a piss take. Don’t you understand that? You were taking the piss hence your attempt to cover your arse this time around.
D) Fuck off.
a) I was referred to my GP by the doctor at West Middlesex Hospital’s A&E dept. for various tests, so had to have an appointment anyway. Getting him to sign a piece of paper at the same time wouldn’t have wasted anyone’s time.
b) If I want to make sure my employer is aware of the exact nature of my illness and have a way for them to independently verify it then I think that’s my business. I haven’t got a problem with paying to do that, and I was also prepared to wait around for someone to cancel their appointment or be late.
c) I was off work initially with what I described as “man-flu,” however that was not the reason for my visit to hospital or the second absence from work, and making sure my employer does not make the same mistake as you have made was part of the point. Obviously I would not bother a doctor or a hospital with “man-flu”, though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t enough to keep me out of the office for 2 days. This would be about my 3rd visit to a doctor in 13 or so years.
d) You are a very angry man, but when you show it without knowing all the facts you can end up looking very silly.
As regards your other comment on my IE whine, there doesn’t seem much point in approving it. All I can say is feel free not to visit this web site if it offends you so.
Andy
As a GP, can i clarify this.
1. GPs are paid to look after those who are ill, or believe themselves to be ill. Under the regulations, as part of caring for those who are ill, we are required to issue certificates for those who are unwell for a week or more – on the basis that we are seeing them anyway, by and large.
2. Sick certification for/after hospital admission/treatment is the responsibility of the hospital – had you needed a sick note, the hospital would/should have given you one. That said, you say yourself you were not off sick long enough to require one.
3. Patients attending purely for certification of self limiting illness was a massive waste of time. and made it harder for the genuinely ill to get seen/treated.
4. One of the few sensible government reforms of the NHS in my lifetime was the decision to allow patients to self-certify for periods of illness of seven days or less
5. The certificates state clearly ‘I saw today/yesterday and so cannot be backdated – and the regulations make it clear that we can issue them for statutory sick pay only, so we are not allowed to use where a self certificate is appropriate.
6. It is, as you say, reasonable to offer to pay for a non-NHS service – but a private acute on the day appointment would probably cost about £75 in the private sector. Did you say to the staff ‘I want an NHS appointment today for an urgent sick note’ or ‘I would like a private appointment today for a matter that is urgent for me, and am happy to pay £75 if the doc is willing to stay late?’
7. Having said that, the letter will say ‘Mr Andy saw me today and tells me he is/was ill in the following way on the following dates’ – which is worth far less than £10, as all it does is tell the employer that this is what you say – and all employers think this means ‘ I felt guilty about my high level of casual sickness, and thought I could avoid disciplinary proceedings with a Doctor’s note’ and so it usually counts double when considering whether disciplinary measures needed!
8. Personally, I wouldn’t charge you £10 for a worthless bit of paper – as this would just encourage you to come back next time you want to justify a day off – so I always tell my patients to self certify, and to ask their employers to write to us with your consent if they feel they need
a sick note. In eight years, I have only received two letters.
tosser,
get a life. tell your pathetic employers to get a life and read the legislation. stop wasting precious NHS time with your irrelevant trivialities. i would havce charged you at least £20 and wouldn’t have had to piss around with change. And if you had come with a £50 note, I would have increased the fee.
you fucking tosser, you have no fucking clue what we do have you.
and don’t come winging with man flu or a sore throat. if you really piss us off you may expect a wicked antibiotic designed to cause thrush, a rash, vomiting and diarrhoea. you dozy fucking ignorant wanker.
yours sincerely
Just to make a point andy did say he was refered to his GP via the hospital he also said the sick note was only “one” of the things he went to his GP for. So lets not jump on his back, My GP’s have Charged for sick notes for a while now as i think it cuts down on the wasters who are getting one to avoid being found out at work.
I’m guessing this article got posted to a doctor’s forum or something then, by the number of abuse-filled comments I have waiting for moderation.
adam pringle: thanks for your comments. I certainly didn’t feel it was worthless but it may well be that it is seen that way, that a sick note that’s not legally required presents a poorer image. In this respect I’m sure I am naive since I don’t spend a lot of time visiting doctors trying to con things out of them, and I’m sure GPs have seen it all in their time. My point is that it made me feel like I was doing something seedy, so it’s a lot more likely that I won’t bother in future.
nhs doctor: I would like to remind you once again that I did not seek a doctor’s appointment solely to get a sick note, and I don’t think it is very clever to write threatening comments in people’s blogs.
To the rest of you whose comments aren’t going to get approved, it’ not because I’m trying to suppress what you have to say – it’s pretty much the same as what has already been said, so there’s just no point. Most of you don’t appear to have actually read the article and believe that I:
– am complaining about paying for a sicknote (I’m not, I didn’t legally need one and I said I realised that right away)
– sought a doctor’s appointment solely for a sicknote (I didn’t, it was a referral after a hospital stay and the sick note was incidental, but writing all about the tests and the nature of my illness wouldn’t have made an very interesting blog entry)
– am bitching about the GP’s behaviour (I’m saying the thing made ME feel seedy, like I was doing some kind of shady deal.)
I can see adam pringle’s point about how it would be seen as worse and just a worthless bit of paper in situations where someone had a poor attendance record at work, so my comment about people being signed off for weeks and doing cash in hand work probably wasn’t fair (I’m sure there are, but I agree that private sick notes don’t enable it). But for me I think it is still worth having since I don’t have a poor attendance record and it will at least show that I saw a doctor.
I won’t approve any more comments that just repeat the assertion that I’m a whiner who took a few days off work for no good reason and then wasted NHS time getting a sick note in the hope that I won’t get in trouble. I think I’ve already explained the situation and so that would just be my word against yours; I don’t really need to have such exchanges with people on the Internet.
Thanks for reading!
If you lot, excluding Adam Pringle, really are doctors, I feel very sorry for your patients. You must treat them like absolute scum. (I am lucky enough to attend an excellent NHS GP in a well-run surgery.)
Just to close this one off, work told me to keep my sick note as it would be best not to have it in my record if it doesn’t need to be. Apparently they didn’t really care about that aspect and had just taken an interest to be sure I was OK.
So it seems I was being far too paranoid after all, and the militant doctors that have been reading can take solace in the fact that I wasted some money. 🙂
I rook myd daughter who has been in bed for a week to the doctors to get a certificate for college, she had flu (as had we all) and was really poorly, I had telephone the surgery on the5th day of her illness and they said if she went back to college the following day she would be able to self certificate, as she had exams (a levels) the following week she really tried to feel better taking all sorts of flu medication and was determined to go in on the Friday so that she could self certificate, she ws still very poorly and stayed in bed all that Friday and weekend, (knowing she had her A level exam on the Tuesday) I telephoned the doctor again on the Friday and stated she would need a certificate, they did not tell me that she would have to be seen that day, they did not have an appointment until the Monday by which time she was much better, back in college but doctor would not issue a certificate because he had not seen her (she had not gone to the surgery because she was ill- although they knew she was ill because I had telephoned twice in that week) It just does not make any sense to me, I then said to the doctor so I should have called you out, he said you could have but I would not have come! How does this work, if you have a bad cold you do not want to take up somebodys appointment who coud need medication for really serious illnesses so you stay away from the surgery (in bed I might add) as theis flu had gone through the whole family. But you go to the surgery as soon as you are feeling better but cannot get a sick note because they have not seen you, I would have thought it would be down to the discretion of the doctor, this particular doctor could see that my daughter was now well and back in college – 1st day – she was only one day out of self certification but he insisted he would not give her a sick note, any comments!
oh deary me! If this is what our nation has come to where’s the hope for the mental health sector?! Are there people left in the world that are compassionate with, or without a payroll? Where is trust? I am 20 and can’t see a future for our country, i wish i were proud, i wish my generation could look up to you guys! Presuming your older anyway. Take care.
The whole situation is ridiculous. If you are genuinely sick then why should you have to pay for a note? A worthless bit of paper? if you have avoided wasting a doctors time by not calling them out (being ill over the weekend) and then on Monday your slightly better, well enough to be able to go to the surgery anyway, get diagnosed, and then get charged for a sick note, from the wrong date, which is utterly worthless. As your sickness began before then. It’s a complete dilemma, you wouldn’t want to contact your doctor as it would waste valuble time, but in order to be able to prove that you were genuinely ill then you would have to contact your doctor.
Does it not occur to any of you that your gripe should be with your college/employer etc who demands a doctor’s certificate rather than with the GP who will not immediately see you and give a certificate because he’s busy seeing people who need medical attention? Of course not… you’re too cowardly to confront them.
@madhu,who are you directing that comment at? The only people in the article or comments that were looking for a sick note were myself and sheila. In my case my employer did not demand one and in sheila’s case according to her statements her daughter really needed one (absent for 5+ days) but was given bad advice that led to her not being able to get one. So just who do you feel is being cowardly? Or are you just having a very bad Christmas and feel the need to lash out on the interweb?