Some Wisconsin doctors could be in hot water because they signed sick notes for striking teachers without normal consultations. Some of the doctors wore white lab coats and offered medical notes to the tens of thousands of protesters who paraded past them.

Some Wisconsin doctors could be in hot water
because they signed sick notes for striking teachers without normal consultations.
Some of the doctors wore white lab coats and offered medical notes to the tens
of thousands of protesters who paraded past them. The crowds were demonstrating
against a Republican-backed state bill to eliminate collective bargaining
rights for most state workers.

So many teachers were absent in some
schools that they had to close for as long as three days. School districts
warned that teachers who missed time without authorisation or a doctor’s note
could be disciplined and even have their pay docked.

The doctors’ generosity was widely
criticised. Writing
in The Atlantic, columnist Ford Vox, a physician and a journalist,
commented.

“A doctor’s sick note is a serious
document. It represents an employer’s desire to verify through a respected,
independent, medically qualified third party the fact of an illness and the
true need for convalescence. In the videos now circulating online, we witness
multiple members of a noted family medicine department trash one of the
well-recognized rights and privileges of their profession, with little
forethought as to the consequences.” ~ Bloomberg,
Feb 21

Michael Cook
medical notes
professionalism

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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