ABSTRACT

Certification of sickness for employers is a task which has been the responsibility of GPs for nearly a century, and is the one aspect of their work relating to workplace health that they cannot avoid. There is no indication that it is a task which is likely to be removed. Rather, if anything, we might expect the clinical governance process which has improved the rest of primary care to spread into this area. It must thus be judged as a core task in primary care, so this is a good place to begin a book about rehabilitation and return to work, so that the wider potential for health improvement which the invitation to participate positively in the certification process offers can be explored. Chapter 4 will examine certification in greater depth. The rest of this chapter will consider what we actually mean by the words used in this field.