‘Perhaps You Need to Change Job’

DR MARK PORTER

OCCUPATIONAL stress is a growing problem but, short of offering a sympathetic ear and a sick note, there is often little that GPs can do to help. Difficult colleagues, too heavy a workload, financial insecurity and fear of redundancy are not easy problems to fix. If they were, they wouldn’t be so stressful.

What most stressed-out employees really need is a new job. Counselling and a sick note can provide temporary relief, but the former generally consists of the bleeding obvious, and the latter tends to delay the inevitable. And if you can’t change the stressor, the problem isn’t going to go away and will be waiting for you on your return from sick leave.

GPs are often criticised for handing out too many sick notes.

And we do. In a recent survey by Doctor newspaper three out four GPs questioned felt that short consultation times and patient pressure meant that they were too quick to sign patients off.

While most patients don’t abuse the system, a small minority make a habit of it and GPs find it hard to combine policing the system with retaining their patients’ trust.

And in conditions such as stress, where there are no definitive tests to assess how bad things are, we have to take our patients’ word, making it very difficult to refuse demands for time off.

The survey also turned up some interesting examples of this abuse, including an employee who managed to get signed off while in jail, and the man who lost his temper when his GP wouldn’t give him a note because he found the journey to work tiring.

(c) 2007 Evening Standard; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.