To think the requirement for a medical certificate to use a gym is ridiculous?

[becomingher]

I’m going on holiday to Italy soon and I was looking at getting some day passes to a gym near my hotel (my hotel doesn’t have a gym, an oversight I now regret).

Apparently I need a medical certificate to state I am cleared for non contact sport! What the hell is this about?! AIBU to think this is utterly ridiculous?

To use Public swimming pools in Greece: need a doctor certificate to confirm you don't have a contagious condition.

My dad collapsed at work. He actually went to his GP previously because he didn't feel "right". His GP told him there was nothing wrong

After another episode in which he had other tests done, he was told he has epilepsy

Where would you get one? GP I suppose.

But a GP certificate wouldn't pick that up. We don't have x-ray eyes that can see the state of someone's arteries. We could pick up high BP but the gym could do that. I can't tell from someone's records if they're going to collapse in the gym

You don't know that. You could have an artery in your heart that is full of plaque. Excersise could cause that plaque to rupture at any time. There's really very little that can be checked for that will stop you collapsing. It's a false sense of security

I’m a GP and we started to push back on these kind of requests a few years ago. It’s to reduce insurance costs for the event/ gym and pass the risk on to the GP. We now provide a brief summary with a list of previously diagnosed medical conditions only. We won’t speculate on the risks of future exercise as we’re not sports medicine specialists and you would need specific tests to determine how your body responds to stress. We also can’t control what that person does in the gym or whether they are going to over exert themselves or push it too far etc.
It’s non NHS funded work so there would be a charge for even a basic letter saying ‘please see brief summary for past medical condition’

You can. But the online ones are obviously medically worthless because they’re just based on a questionnaire. They may be rejected by the gym.

These are actually surprisingly difficult to get in the uk. I needed one for an event once. My GP said no, not even for a fee. A private GP said no. I ended up paying for one of the online services and luckily it was accepted but I’m aware that the medical value was nil.

My GP refused for similar reasons. But out of interest where do you expect people to get these? Lots of international sports events require them these days, other countries routinely supply them at regular check-up. But for a British person they are difficult verging on impossible to acquire, which is intensely frustrating. The event organisers always say “just go to your doctor.”

I think it’s a “thing” in a lot of Europe. There’s no park run in France for this exact reason and you have to have a medical certificate to do running events there.

This isn’t NHS work and your GP will likely decline to do it - they will certainly charge if they do.
And it’s meaningless. You might once in a blue moon pick up someone with an arrhythmia or congenital abnormality - although most of these will need echo scans to pick up, not something that’s done at the GP surgery. And most people who have a stroke or an MI will not have had major abnormalities beforehand to pick up. Doctors don’t have crystal balls

An organised sport or event insisting on a medical certificate should have an arrangement with a sports medicine clinic or similar. GPs are not sports specialists and don’t know the ins and outs of most sports or exercise routines.

Given how many of us are addicted to our phones I don't think putting up a load of bureaucratic barriers to taking part in other activities is a good thing for society.

It’s an Italy thing. I once attended a sport activity (hobby, nothing professional) there as a one-off and I needed quite an extensive medical certificate.
Edited to add: I needed to make a private GP appointment for this, I don’t exactly remember the costs but it was £100+ I think.

I was watching GPs behind closed doors and someone had asked his GP to sign one of these forms. The GP said he didn't like doing them because like you say, you can't speculate on risk of future exercise

Yeah I won’t be paying this lol

And they were getting medical checkups everyday!!!

€75 to use a gym is fucking absurd

It’s probably a matter of liability in case you get injured. They don’t want to get sued.

I think its pretty funny how much Italy has changed. I have family there and have always spent a lot of time on the country. I remember as a kid in the 80s we went up the leaning tower at Pisa on a couple of occasions, and the balconies had NO GUARD RAIL. they were literally just open marble platforms. About 6 ft wide, slippery marble especially in the rain and not even a 1 way system. So people would be going around the outside of the tower, maybe 60 ft up, nervously with their backs against the wall and come across someone going the other way. One of them would have to step closer to the drop of death to pass. Mental 😆

We have defibs and trained staff in our UK gyms too.
If you run and are there on a Saturday you could do Rome parkrun.

My seemingly fit friend had a heart attack at his local leisure centre last month.

fortunately the staff rushed straight over to him with a defibrillator and he survived.

It’s their laws…

It costs less for a resident, and indeed in you could get it for less if you plan ahead ;)

I think your attitude just shows how little people understand about the cost of healthcare, why the healthcare system is abused by so much of the general public in the UK and why the NHS is on its knees… People just don’t understand how expensive proper healthcare is. €40 ~ €80, even annually, for a simple medical check is not unreasonable. Given that a simple gym membership could be 10 times that cost or more a year it’s just seen as part of the overall cost.

There are plenty of people that’d say that a £200 year levy for watching TV is absurd…. And also that it’s aalso absurd to run a health system in a developed country that treats people in corridors and makes patients wait months if not years for simple treatments. But that’s just accepted in the UK, when it shouldn’t be because that really is absurd :)