Medical History

artha

What is a new potential employer entitled to know about your medical history if the causes/conditions are not relevant to your current abilities i.e you no longer suffer from the conditions and are not receiving any treatment or taking medication

Emmzi

depends if they will recur and could affect your ability to do the job - do they?

you can refuse to fill in the medical form, which will likely end up with you not getting the job. or you could lie, which could get you fired for non disclosure if you then have to take time off with the condition.

Liz_the_Whizz

Hi Artha,

Employers vary widely in how far they go into a candidate's medical history and how they ask about it. If they use an application form, they will often ask about medical history over, say, the last 5 years. And even those that only ask for a CV will check on sickness absences over 1 to 3 years when they seek references. So the further a medical problem is in the past, the less likely it is to trigger concern.

Larger employers often use an Occupational Health service to carry out pre-employment screening and/or medicals which explore medical history much more fully. Conversely, because this is done (or at least should be) confidentially and objectively, there is probably less chance that a resolved medical condition with little chance of recurrence will be a bar to employment.

The temptation may be to not disclose a condition which you do not think is relevant. But if you do not, and it proves to be a problem, it could lead to termination of your employment. The key thing is to tell them honestly if they ask you.

HTH.

livelyred

Also they can check you medical history with your GP aswell they did with me when i got a post in the NHS a few wks ago

artha

Emmzi wrote: »

depends if they will recur and could affect your ability to do the job - do they?

OK in the spirit of the forums I need to be a little more open for people to understand the situation. I am newly retired and in the short term don't need to work(lucky I know) but may want to go back to some sort of part time work in the future once I've sorted out all those things I've not had time for whilst working.

The problems I've overcome in the last few years are clinical depression and alcoholism (both linked due to work problems). The latter problem is not on my company record as my GP advised that the stigma associated with this is still prevalent and would not put this down on my sick notes when signing me off for a long period of recovery.

I am now clear of both problems but as long as I can work without needing to financially should I still declare these past problems?

Errata

livelyred wrote: »

Also they can check you medical history with your GP aswell they did with me when i got a post in the NHS a few wks ago

A GP will require the patient's permissiom, usually in writing, before they will disclose anything about the patient to a third party.

Emmzi

Artha, I think it depends entirely on the type of job. If o were going to work in sales, for example, with a lot of corporate hospitality, I'd want people to know I didn't want to be around a lot of drink or drinkers...

I suspect it is more about choosing the right profession for you to thrive in (which is probably where this is less relevant)

Re the depression - depends. You will know best how long you have felt 'clear', and what is likely to be a trigger for you.

But if they ask - I would say tell. it's in your best interests. You don't want to work for an employer who is going to be arsey about it anyway - do you?

artha

Emmzi wrote: »

Artha, I think it depends entirely on the type of job. If o were going to work in sales, for example, with a lot of corporate hospitality, I'd want people to know I didn't want to be around a lot of drink or drinkers...

I suspect it is more about choosing the right profession for you to thrive in (which is probably where this is less relevant)

Re the depression - depends. You will know best how long you have felt 'clear', and what is likely to be a trigger for you.

But if they ask - I would say tell. it's in your best interests. You don't want to work for an employer who is going to be arsey about it anyway - do you?

Actually I was thinking about something more mundane in terms of employment - just a part time top up to my pension.Maybe even justb stacking shelves in my local supermarket. the question in this case is if I declared nothing could the employer get the information regardless?

Emmzi

artha wrote: »

Actually I was thinking about something more mundane in terms of employment - just a part time top up to my pension.Maybe even justb stacking shelves in my local supermarket. the question in this case is if I declared nothing could the employer get the information regardless?

depends. if they give you a medical form to fill out and check it themselves, no. if they ask for a doctors name and permission to contact, yes. unlikely a supermarket will send you for a medical screening one on one with company doctor for that kind of work.

So you will probably know at application stage and if it looks iffy, you can go ahead and see what happens, or choose to withdraw with 'I don't think this is the right job for me', no further explanation needed.

you could laso try some temp work to begin with? I have never been asked for doctors details or medical screening from a temp agency and it's a reasonable way of testing the employment world and getting some recent experience.