Dental work sickness

[Jammylou]

Can anyone advise if a Doctor is able to give a Fit Note for a dental abcess or does this need to be a Dentist.
I have a staff member who has had a mouth abcess and advised me he needs 4 weeks off and will get a Fit Note from a Doctor.

I’m not under it. I can have an opinion on how it works though. A system which is open to abuse obviously works in your favour so have at it.

That's certainly not rare, we have dental abscesses on our emergency theatre list every other day or so (London seems to have particularly bad teeth), but can't ever see anyone needing that long off. The surgical managed bad ones get 72h of IV ab then home on oral

That's not what a dental abscess is.🙄

Yeah, I couldn't speak with mine - and I only had two days off work (it was lanced, I was vomiting, waiting for antibiotics to kick in)

Just depends on the GP they see I guess. If they roll over for an easy life there's nothing you can do except monitor all other absences carefully and do the full return to work procedure when they're back

@Destiny123
It IS extremely rare in general dental practice. Patients tend to contact us and get treated before the situation escalates. I don't work in a hospital setting. You have better insight into this.

If the employee in question was admitted to a hospital setting surely the hospital would issue the fit note.

Even those who are admitted to hospital , have surgical drainage and iv abs are discharged quickly and would be safe to be back to work within self certifying time.

The only exception I could think of is if patient developed sepsis and ended up in critical care , however in this case I doubt they would be in a fit state to phone employer up and as they would be in hospital fit note would not be a problem!

Yea we only see the ones that can't be community managed with trismus requiring awake intubations often. Yeah maxfax will issue their sick notes. Really depends on area. Working in London we get sooooo many. Working in Surrey, maybe 2 a year lol

If they’re repeatedly off even if they are signed off they can still be managed out on capability grounds. You’d to follow the process and give correct warnings, etc but even people with cancer can get managed out.

Update from staff member provided fit note stress and anxiety so he will off for lengthy period now.
No mention of this before but that stress/anxiety caused mouth issue.
Obviously alot more going on here.

Are you their manager? How long have they worked there?

Yes. 4 years.
Attendance and performance poor was about time commence processes.

Do you have a repeated/prolonged sickness policy and are you following it? Do you have a HR dept, she would need to have different warnings, etc but ultimately could be got rid of.

How bad is it? I had a dental abcess the week before Christmas but it had completely cleared up within a week. I can’t imagine why anyone would need so much time off.

I did have a GP appointment for something else the same day I was due at the dentist and the doctor said he would have prescribed antibiotics if I don’t have an appointment later that day.

<Laughs in six weeks waiting for an urgent extraction referral, several courses of metronidazole, a shitload of codeine and feeling at death's door with the barely controlled infection doing its best to spread into the surrounding tissues - all in an area which actually has dentists prepared to do either NHS or private work>

I can well believe somebody feels ill enough to need that length of time off. Stops the moment the bastarding tooth comes out, though. Pity nobody was willing or able to remove it sooner even with money not being any issue, though.

You can have a million opinions…but if someone has a fit note it makes jack shit of a difference what your opinion is

You sound fucking heartless 🙄

Where I work we would never dismiss someone who has cancer.
They may end up ill health retired but only if that was their wish.
With repeated sickness we do have processes but they are lengthy and protracted.
You have to evidence support etc. Which is fair enough.
What annoys me is constant abuse of sick pay. It's rife.
Managers generally know the genuine ones and it's extremely frustrating knowing there's so much abuse of the system. Long term ot affects genuine cases as policies end up being changed because of the constant abuse.
Genuine sickness i wholeheartedly support the pay system in place.

I’m not a manager and have never managed anyone out, let alone someone with cancer. I’m just saying it can happen, it happened to an ex colleague……I was horrified. So no not “heartless”. But thanks.

however if someone was blatantly and repeatedly taking the piss I wouldn’t if it were up to me lose any sleep about managing them out. It really negatively affects everyone else in the team who has to pick the work up.

A manager runs the risk of other people leaving or becoming ill due to excess workload.

You have to evidence support etc. Which is fair enough.
What annoys me is constant abuse of sick pay. It's rife.

even with evidence it can come down to capability. And the evidence can backfire in that case. If someone is repeatedly being signed off an employer can argue they are not capable of doing their job. Ill health retirement is very hard to get, even in the nhs I’ve only known one person get it. And they had stage 4 cancer with a very short life expectancy prognosis.

I do know this. But this is a forum. It exists for people to give opinions. Sod off now as there’s nothing left for us to say.

I’ve known a few people in my team get ill health retirement….one for effects of cancer treatment ( no current evidence of cancer)….one for fibromyalgia ….and another for peripheral neuropathy in hands …..all 3 were clinical in the nhs….we have a very supportive manager …
none of them had any issues getting it

That’s good. And the genuinely ill people will be so grateful for that.

The shirkers won’t want it because sick pay pays more. If you can repeatedly get six months full pay, six months half pay why would they want a smaller pension?

This is exactly what happens where I work.
Repeated sickness when they're pay returns to 100% sick. Then return just before it drops.
It's an ongoing cycle.

I was unfortunate enough to have a dental abscess last month. I'm a teacher so ploughed on through the day with toothache until it was unbearable. My dentist didn't have any emergency appointments so by the time I saw an emergency dentist my jaw was swollen and I was feeling rotten. Teaching isn't a job you can do with a swollen mouth and lack of ability to shout.
Long story short but I ended up signed off for 2 weeks because I then had a failed extraction, more swelling, and reaction to antibiotics, before having the tooth extracted. It was a nightmare and I'd much rather have been at work!