Paying for sick leave – Myth or fact?

A disgruntled physician who graduated a few decades ago with an advanced qualification in a medical specialty commented after last week's column that "medicine is not so much of a profession any more, it has become a business," which it now is, of course, magazine advertisements and all.

I was not too sure if this was part of the multinational conflict over the World Health Organization’s proposed pandemic accord, which may be voted on this week, not by doctors, I am told, but by politicians and pharmaceutical manufacturers, but along the lines of "taking in front before in front takes you."

The comment was in addition to queries I have received about the article quoted last week citing the 1980 Italian approach to jailing people who take "sick leave."

And just for the grammatical and semantic record, there is no such thing as sick leave, unless you are an experimental subject paid for being injected by a virus that will require you to leave your day job and be subject to research examination on the progress of the resultant illness.

What you apply to your employer for is "payment during illness." It is supposed to be a genuine illness, not the kind that Italian public servants were jailed for when the illness inspection police in Rome found they were using a forged or phoney "sick leave" certificate to avoid work and still collect a salary or a wage, driving a taxi and tending bar while on leave. That was fraud!

This, you must understand, was not the same fraud charge that put people behind bars when they paid licensed physicians for sick certificates, where someone went into a doctor's office and, without looking up, he mumbled, "How many days you want?" and scribbled something called "syncope" on a pre-printed scrap of paper, while mumbling, still without eye contact: "That will be $140, pay the receptionist."

Or those already on paid disciplinary suspension, which never actually resulted in a discharge, but just went on, year after year, while they were working in Canada or studying somewhere far away.

One woman I met in the supermarket boasted to me that her son got paid for the full five years it took him to get his degree. She claimed he was a policeman.

I didn’t believe her, of course. Surely, members of our police service are not dishonest. They don’t take advantage of the glitches in the police administration systems.

But just in case, you should be aware of what the Industrial Relations Act Ch 88:01, section 77, sub-sections (1) to (5) says:

(1) A worker, who by deception, absents himself from his employment is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $1,000 or imprisonment for six months.

(2) A medical practitioner who issues a medical certificate to any worker for the purpose of enabling the worker by deception to absent himself from his employment using the certificate is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $2,000 or imprisonment for 12 months.

(3) For the purposes of this section, a medical practitioner may be held guilty of an offence although the worker was not convicted of or did not commit the offence under subsection (1), if, but only if, from all the circumstances of the case the medical practitioner may reasonably be considered to have acted for such purpose as is specified in subsection (2).

(4) In any prosecution for an offence under subsection (2) (a) it shall be competent for the prosecution to adduce evidence of all the surrounding circumstances of the case, including the existence of other medical certificates of the medical practitioner issued allegedly to enable the worker or co-workers of the worker in question by deception to absent himself or themselves, respectively from his or their employment using such certificates; and such evidence shall be admissible notwithstanding any rule of law to the contrary.

But fear not for the safety of the medical-certificate-issuers. The act, ever conscious of class and status distinctions, goes on to say: "It shall be a defence for a medical practitioner to prove that he did not know, and had no reasonable cause to believe, that the medical certificate would be used for the purpose of enabling the worker by deception to absent himself from his employment by means of the certificate."

How one proves a negative I have no idea; I am not a legal draughtsman.

But it could be that the last quotation, which I copied word for word from the Industrial Relations Act, means – Me? Think that anyone would ever use a medical certificate to absent himself from work by deception? By pretending to be sick when he is not? And still get paid for the absence?

Nonsense. How dare you even suggest it? I am a doctor. You can trust me. I took the hippocratic oath! And you can trust my lawyer, who will be sending you a pre-action protocol letter if you even dare suggest such a thing!

That would be corruption.