Healthcare Professionals to be able to provide fit notes

This July sees other Healthcare Professionals such as Pharmacists, Nurses, Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists, also being able to provide fit notes.  It means that GPs alone will not have to bear the burden.  The reason behind the change in the law is to assist GPs, who are very over-burdened, with what is often a paper exercise for them. 

This is to be welcomed, but if there is a concern it is probably that widening the category of professionals who can give fit notes, to those who perhaps have less of an overview of the employee’s health, might only heighten the trend that the health care professional will always sign off the employee, if they request it, without a real examination of whether employees are, really, too ill to work.