Polite Dissent

On Monday, a call came into the office from a local employer.

“Did the doctor write a medical excuse for J-T-?”
The nurse checked the chart. J-T- was a patient I’d seen towards the end of the previous week. I treated a nasty bronchitis and wrote him a note excusing him from work through the 4th (last Friday).
“Yes, he did,” she replied.
“Was it for the 4th or 7th?”

It seems the note J-T- handed in at work had the 4 in “4 Feb 2005″ crossed out and a 7 written in place of it.

The work excuses we use at the clinic are pre-printed — we just fill in the appropriate blanks — and two pages. The patient keeps the top copy and a duplicate bottom copy is filed in the medical chart.

If I change a work note, I almost always fill out a new one so there’s no question. On the rare occasions that I do change the original note, I’ll cross out and rewrite the whole phrase, not just the number, and I’ll initial and date any alterations.

“The note the doctor wrote was for the 4th,’ the nurse said, reading off the duplicate in the chart.
“That’s what we thought.”

So now this guy has his employers mad at him (rightfully so) and one of our nurses mad at him (even worse). The sad thing is that this never had to happen. I’m a soft touch when it comes to work excuses; all he had to do was the call the office and tell me he was still feeling sick and I would have written him a new note with no questions asked.