Hi Julie
Couple of factors they may not be aware of depending on their awareness of local culture, legislation and your code of conduct. I suspect you work for people who may be used to a different model
of OH and business?
- in UK and Irish law the OH practitioner would be considered to be an "independent expert". Even though your employer pays your wage you are ethically independent in a way none of their other support services are.
- the GP is not considered "independent" nor an expert in assessing disability for employment law purposes (EEA 1995-2015 i think in your case) for the following reasons
- they have an advocacy based role with their patient (the employee) and are therefore more likely to act as "patient secretary" and present a case that is based on their patient's desires/wants/perceptions
- treating doctors work to a largely medical model of disease and therefore are not experienced in nor trained in advising on the social model of disability that underpins the employment equality act
- treating doctors etc do not receive any formal study or training on assessing how health issues affect a persons ability to carry out activities of ordinary daily activity (at home or at work); training is focused on disease processes and treating disease.
- GPs /treating doctors assess symptoms not disability in their assessments
- GPs etc provide OH reports on top of their own work and therefore OH report requests add a burden to their demand - many GPs will decline to respond to a request of this nature.
- Requesting information from the GP for this would likely be considered a breach of data protection and privacy law as the information is not needed i.e. you the OH can provide the information they need based on your independent impartial assessment.
- The matter of disability as it relates to employment is a legal issue not a medical issue so again not appropriate to involve GP, employers have been clearly told by courts not to rely even on OH opinion but make their own determination based on combination
of information sources e.g. what the employee tells them they can and can't do, what they observe themselves e.g. an employee limping affecting pace of walking, what the OH report tells them about the presence of an impairment and it's affect on the person's
ability to carry out ordinary daily activities. To this end your report needs to have that information.. whether there is an impairment affecting any/all ordinary activities and if yes, is it having a substantial (more than minor) adverse affect (remembering
effect can be cumulative). In Irish law there is no need for the impairment to be long-term or likely to be long-term.
Hope this helps.
Carr
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