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Top Incapacity related benefits topic #4447

Subject: "96% of GP's not happy about well notes" First topic | Last topic
Casework team
                              

Legal Casework Officer, RNID London
Member since
17th Aug 2006

96% of GP's not happy about well notes
Thu 15-Oct-09 10:45 AM

Did anyone else see the article in (i think) Mondays Evening Standard (London Paper) about the results of research into Dr's views on "well notes".

I have only managed to find the following, but suspect there is more:

GPs are not, and will not become, the police of the benefits system. Our duty is to work for the benefit of our patients.

Work is, despite what it feels like at the end of a long day, good for us. Successive governments have striven to curtail the number of people on benefits related to ill-health. This has often been an unsuccessful battle, with claimants being shifted around the system, frequently without real benefit to them.

One thing has been consistent: it is always GPs’ fault for signing too many people on the sick. And so we have the latest idea, for us all to issue well notes.

This concept can only have been dreamt up by people who spend their time advising on how to run general practice rather than actually doing it. Asking GPs, who spend hours each week issuing sick notes, would have been far too obvious, and would not have given the desired answer.

As GPs we are trained as specialist generalists to work with our patients to help them achieve the best possible outcome for their symptoms or disease.

We have a duty to discuss with them the relationship between their work and their illness, and we can suggest the benefits of work, but we have no influence over the main protagonists in the battle for the Government to get people back to work – employers and the Department of Work and Pensions.

The key to getting people back to work early is a sympathetic employer who is able to assess the situation and act appropriately.

  

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Replies to this topic
RE: 96% of GP's not happy about well notes, shawn, 15th Oct 2009, #1
RE: 96% of GP's not happy about well notes, Casework team, 15th Oct 2009, #2
      RE: 96% of GP's not happy about well notes, shawn, 15th Oct 2009, #3

shawn
                              

editorial director, rightsnet
Member since
28th Jul 2005

RE: 96% of GP's not happy about well notes
Thu 15-Oct-09 10:59 AM

there was also this recent dwp research ...

Electronic medical certificates receive mixed response from GPs (rightsnet news, 14 July 2009)

  

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Casework team
                              

Legal Casework Officer, RNID London
Member since
17th Aug 2006

RE: 96% of GP's not happy about well notes
Thu 15-Oct-09 12:18 PM

Hi Shawn

No it was definetly an article based on some research of Doctors in London's views, regarding the "well notes" and opinions doubting whether Doctors actually had the qualifications to asses a patients abikity to work, in the context that if something went wrong, then who would be at fault ?

Have tried GMC and BMA websites but found nothing, perhaps thats an indication i have become unfit for work !!!!

  

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shawn
                              

editorial director, rightsnet
Member since
28th Jul 2005

RE: 96% of GP's not happy about well notes
Thu 15-Oct-09 12:53 PM

hi ... yes, i wasn't suggesting it was from the dwp research ...

seems to be an extract from this ...

http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=4118317

cheers - shawn

  

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