If you ever go off sick, you go to see your GP who issues you a sicknote whether for your employers or for the DWP. The sicknote stipulates that you refrain from work until a certain time. Well, all that is about to change as NL wants to bring in electronic ‘fit notes’.
It is all about GPs switching advice from what you can’t do to what you can do. And again, it is about keeping people in work as opposed to claim benefits. The proposals are based on Dame Carol Black’s Working for a Healthier Tomorrow which was published last March and that NL have written their response to.
The electronic ‘fit notes’ will replace the paper sick notes from 2010. They have been tested in around 500 GP surgeries in the UK and the Dept of Health have received positive feedback. Apparently the BMA supports this measure and the mental health charity, MIND supports it as well (though when it comes to radical dynamic activism….MIND just can’t be relied on!).
Sick leave costs an estimated £100 billion per year – but helping people stay in work doesn’t just have an economic imperative, it has a moral and social one too. Poor health can prevent people fulfilling their potential, leaving them more likely to slip into poverty and social exclusion.
That is why we have set out a comprehensive framework to help support employers and the NHS encourage individuals back into the world of work as soon as possible. I’m particularly pleased to announce a review of the health and wellbeing of the NHS workforce, which will benefit staff and help drive up the quality of care for patients. (Alan Johnson, Health Secretary).
We back to this belief that work makes you healthy and the emphasis is also on those who are costing the state billions in sickness. No mention about making workplace environments habitable, flexible hours, training, and so on. The whole infrastructure needs to be changed where oppression and discrimination are taken seriously and not just lip service. Stress related illnesses are on the increase, longer working hours that lead to more alienation and atomisation. People becoming burnt out cos they have chewed up and spat out the system. And Alan Johnson wonders why billions is spent on sick leave?
On a personal note, I went off sick for 4 mths the summer of 2007. Fortunately I had a very good insightful GP who encouraged me to take time out of the rat race and to do positive things (I took up photography). She didn’t moralise or judge me, she was actually on my side (and to find a GP like that is sometimes like finding a needle in a haystack!). She didn’t concentrate on getting me back into work, her main emphasis was improving the state of my mind and included letting me rest on my own terms. Will this same quality of treatment happen under these so-called ‘fit notes’? With GPs probably under pressure with the incentive to save money you can bet who is going to come out of it the worst….
Posted by harpymarx 
