HELP In A&e and worried about job

[Silvercoconut]

Can anyone help with some strategies?
I'd like to be able to advise my daughter who is currently in A&e since nine o'clock this evening with terrible cellulitis in her hand and arm caused by a bug bite. She went to the out of hours doctor service because she's very swollen red and hot.

She's supposed to be in work at 11 a.m..
Just last week she had a disciplinary because over the past nine months she has had three sick days. Once was flu, once she was also unable to work due to trigeminal neuralgia for which she had a doctors certificate. And 3 weeks ago she had switched some medications, the dose was increased and she was suffering terrible nausea and vomiting.
She threw up whilst at work and was told to go home.

She's now sitting in the hospital having terrible anxiety about work, that she will lose her job I'm not sure they can do that but I don't know what to suggest to her.
I don't think she should make her way home she's in terrible pain also, she really does need IV antibiotics.

Oh bless her! I used to work in a place with a similar sickness policy and remember having an interview like this in my first year. I’d just try and reassure her that it’s not targeted, but a standard policy and they will have a HR system that will prompt any interview. I remember them asking me about patterns in my absences - but I just calmly told them it was purely bad luck that I’d been ill at those times. I kept working there for the next two years until I moved on.

How awful for your daughter - both the fact she is ill
and worrying about her job. The law needs to change.

10 days equals two weeks of paid sick leave which isn't great. My UK based company provides three months full pay followed by three months half pay.

OP - your daughter should have been given a copy of her company's absence policy if she has had a disciplinary meeting. It's likely that the process goes through a number of warning stages before dismissal. If it's anything like my work policy, she might be on a first written warning so she would still have final written warning to be issued before losing her job.

If it's a first warning for absence (3 absences in most places trigger an investigation) then it will be a formal verbal warning, so she's likely to get another investigation eg they will ask what happened so keep the record of the inpatient admission & discharge summary. The worst that would happen is a written warning,

If there's another unrelated absence then at worst that would go to final written warning. Dismissal would only be considered after that process. The bar is quite high for dismissal for genuine absences.

If she's on a probation period it can be different.

You daughter should just be concentrating on getting better not worrying about work.

I suggest she phones her employer, explain the situation and advise she can provide medical information regarding being admitted to A&E if required.

When will she know the outcome of the disciplinary meeting?

When she is well enough she needs to obtain a copy of her employers disciplinary policy/procedure and the same for sickness/ absence.

Hope she feels better soon 💐

If she hasn't contacted them yet, she needs to do so ASAP so they can sort someone else. Is she looking for anything else?

"here" is NZ. She shouldn't be getting a warning at all with genuine illness, it's draconian.

I don't understand why 111 sent you to A&E. I regularly get cellulitis infections from bug bites and it's a simple call to 111 and then speak to someone, send photo and then pick up antibiotics from pharmacy.
Assuming it's not so bad she needs IV antibiotics though.
She won't be sacked from thw sounds of it but they will be monitoring her

No-one should be getting warnings because they are sick. Anywhere I have worked employers take sick leave at face value, unless there are obvious signs of swinging the lead. I have never in my life received a warning, and I used to get sick a lot when I was young, yet this often comes up on MN.

The sick leave I mentioned is the law, obviously employers can go above and beyond that if they wish.

Yes, who would have thought that large corporations would use policies that allow them to fire people for being sick so unfairly and without compassion? 🙄

Really… is that how it got through the door.

It’s not been like that in any organisation I’ve ever worked for. The shift to draconian sickness policies after the millennium was aimed at any sickness for whatever reason unless you’ve got a covering diagnosis of disability. Reasons why the working classes feel abused #6 - if it was just about stopping hangovers more people would be happier. It’s not, it’s just about controlling the plebs and turning them back into serfs. Most people I know go to work when they shouldn’t.

Sorry for the hijack op, I hope your dd is better soon.

How long has she worked there?

I'm really sorry she's been put in that level of stress over a few instances of genuine illness.

In hope the antibiotics kick in and she feels much better soon

Gosj how is your dd, this is really a very nasty condition and hopefully the antibiotics will start working and make her better.

Can she take a few photographs of her arm, b9th to show the difference and also a photo time stamped of the iv unit going into the arm and include her in the picture. keep these for future useage

I had a disciplinary at work for absence, apparently it was for my own benefit to see if there was an underlying reason (bs) and they found their wasn't't so I had a strike on my record. A month later I was hospitalised and was seriously ill, had 3 months off work and I had been ill all along as there was an underlying condition that was present - they never said anything about the 3 months off work! never followed up on my disciplinary and for the next 7 years I worked there not another word was spoken about it.

It’s not about the amount of time off it’s more the frequency and the pattern, employers use measurements like the Bradford scale. If she had 3 days off in one chunk it would have very probably arisen to nothing.

Very often it’s just a box ticking exercise because it has triggered the workplace policy. I was a trade union rep and though I was on the side of the employees unfortunately some peoples behaviour meant they did deserve to be disciplined or lose their jobs, it’s why workplaces have policies like this.

All the reasonable folk reading this just won’t have a clue what really goes on and those awful people are why people like the op daughter are unfairly affected.

my relative was hospitalised for 3 weeks with this last year, it was awful, very painful and her leg was very swollen and she couldn't walk very well as couldn't weight bare. I guess everyone is different

Does this mean that this employer would dismiss cancer patients? It doesn't sound legal.

whilst some employees do indeed take the piss, the same amount of managers don't use the system as it was intended and that creates another problem

Yes that sounds like a full blown infection and it can be extremely serious with risk of sepsis. The trick is to get it early which works with antibiotics but once it's past a point you need IV antibiotics and then that's a hospital visit. Hope they recovered ok.

Any National will have policies it needs to follow for everyone - so I do not agree that the employer is being ‘mean’. Your daughter may move to the next stage of sickness absence - but won’t be dismissed at this point. Has she read the sickness policy? This would clarify the situation and may be reassuring.
The company needs her in work - perhaps they need cover if it’s a shop and she is going to be absent - so notice of absence is key. Presumably she has already notified them? Even if she has been seen in A&E since the original post, she is hardly likely to be in a fit state to go to work.

This is so bad. I was off with sepsis in January for six weeks and my sick leave ran out which was a worry. I've now had to have elective surgery which means I'll probably be off for quite a while. I obviously panicked and spoke to my boss saying to be honest I'd be better off leaving than trying to survive on ssp and they immediately spoke to other seniors who immediate said not to worry they'd pay my full salary while I was off.
Recovery from health trauma is bad enough without having to stress about work. I'm incredibly lucky

It was the same in the NHS, had been on my last ward 20 years. Hadn't been off sick. Had a complicated tooth extraction max fax, notified ward manager, got dry socket,it was then Christmas day, she rang demanding certificate, otherwise she was marking me unauthorized absence. There wasn't even an emergency dentist open! I had a car crash, and a virus. She gave me a formal notice letter, and I got a warning letter, PLUS interview with the matron, and she took over my sick leave for the next 6 months. Consequently people came to work when they were ill or had just had surgery. There was some ", teachers pets" who got away with this. If you don't get antibiotics quickly for cellulitis, it's IV.

They fortunately didn't get sepsis, but were very sick. The leg a year + later is still larger than the other, it's never returned to the former size. It was a kitten scratch prior to the animal having its injections - that is the suspected culprit

They have to treat everyone the same you can’t pick and choose and decide who illness is worthy of implementing the sickness policy or not

If they did decide to dismiss they may go down the capability route as in for whatever reason you can’t fulfil your role

business can’t support unlimited sick they can’t function so they need measures and policies in place to

Actually I do, minimum wage. I obviously just work for a very nice employer!