Dear All,
I seek your expertise knowledge in this matter that arose last week.
Case study
An employee who has been off work for a significant amount of time was reviewed by occupational health about two weeks ago. It was found that this employee continues to be unfit to work by their own admission that they continually vomiting, losing weight, poor appetites for intake of nutrition and very tearful (this is not new). To cut the topic shorts, this employee has had various intervention from the own general practitioner, from our own occupational health physician, occupational health nurse and our health and well-being team but very little progress has been made.
Two weeks ago they attended a review at the occupational health departments and brought a letter that suggests that they may have a possible 'genetic' condition which was predisposing them to having abnormal liver and associated biochemistry result. However, this employee have in the past have over indulged alcohol frequently but now has been told to abstain from alcohol intake for good. From our assessment of this employee it was very apparent that they are not fit to return to work in an environment where sterility is key but this employee was warned that it is possible that following this report management may decide to dismiss or on capability grounds. HR receive our reports and contacted the employee to discuss the matter and the employee visited the general practitioner that week and was satisfied fit to return to work with immediate effect.
HR liaised with occupational health and the matter was discussed and questions arose about the employee's sudden fitness to work. It was agreed that the employee is brought back into occupational health departments for further review . I seek your expert knowledge and opinion on the following:
What can we do if the employee attend a review with us and suddenly announced that they are fit to work despite them being under investigation to appreciate the extent of liver damage if any?
Do we contact the GP and ask why the employee is suddenly fit to return to work?
Do we allow this employee to return back to work given that it is a sterile environments that they work at and they reported symptoms of vomiting unexpectedly?
Where do we stand legally if this issue should be brought to the legal system for analysis, is the GPs opinion weighty when compared to ours as they are the one responsible for the treating of this employee?
Or is the occupational health more weighty in terms of our understanding of the working environment and our assessment of the employee very recently.
The bottom line is HR are very unhappy about the length of time this employee has been off work and they are considering the possibility of dismissing. This is because this whole saga could take months as the employee is still undergoing investigations and by own admitted was very ill but now suddenly the change of health status which in my opinion I think it was because they were told of the possibility of being dismissed.
I realised this posting is very long but it is a very complicated case and it has been going on for a very long time and every opportunity has been taken to help the employee and in my been and it is my opinion that there is nothing else the organisation can do to help this employee as even if deployment or reduction in hours is recommended it is still inappropriate due to their health status.
Thanks in Advance
Thelma
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