Kate Venables asked:
"Does anybody have a feel for the prevalence of work-related ill-health
diagnoses in medical certificates in the general population, or in other
university staff, or in other large organisations?"
We stopped looking at medical certificate data some years ago, having
concluded that the 'diagnostic' information on certificates was too
unreliable to be useful. In a large organisation (>60,000 employees at the
time) the effort involved in collecting / collating such poor quality data
could not be justified.
A medical certificate simply confirms that a person who is absent from work
has seen a doctor and, in the opinion of that doctor, the absence is due to
ill-health sufficient to make them unfit for work (or, alternatively, that
the doctor has no reason / grounds for disagreeing with the individual's
assertion that they are unfit for work).
It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has found the examination
of this data to be useful.
Regards
Nigel
Dr Nigel Dowdall
Senior Consultant Occupational Physician
British Airways, Waterside (HMAG)
PO Box 365, Harmondsworth, UB7 0GB
UK
Tel/Fax: +44 (0)208738 7707
Mobile: 07789 612705
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