Advice when does sickness end

Gordie1975

Hi there, due to a cancer operation I had today, I am putting a self certificate in for 1 week to allow me to fully recover.
My days off this week were Fri/sat, and I will be phoning work tomorrow night no notify officially(I already spoke to the manager and he knew I may be off) that I won't be in Sunday and for the next 7 days, originally I was going to put a sick note in Saturday, but I hadn't realised it was my day off, so that seems silly to waste a day off.
My question is though, if I take 7 days from Sunday, it means my first day back will be Easter Sunday, and our shop isn't open that day, so will that need to be an extra day sick requiring me to get s fit note as it would be 8 days, or will it need to be a day off, then do a return to work Monday?
Thanks for any advive

sangie595

Gordie1975 wrote: »

Hi there, due to a cancer operation I had today, I am putting a self certificate in for 1 week to allow me to fully recover.
My days off this week were Fri/sat, and I will be phoning work tomorrow night no notify officially(I already spoke to the manager and he knew I may be off) that I won't be in Sunday and for the next 7 days, originally I was going to put a sick note in Saturday, but I hadn't realised it was my day off, so that seems silly to waste a day off.
My question is though, if I take 7 days from Sunday, it means my first day back will be Easter Sunday, and our shop isn't open that day, so will that need to be an extra day sick requiring me to get s fit note as it would be 8 days, or will it need to be a day off, then do a return to work Monday?
Thanks for any advive

Regardless of what days you work, you are counted as sick for every day that you are sick. So your first day of sickness is the first day of sickness. This isn't a "waste of a day off" - it is a day off when you are sick. You should therefore notify from today.

How do you know that it will take seven days to fully recover from an operation for cancer? I've got to assume that we are not talking about something that is actually serious - cancer isn't usually a day patient treatment with a bit of self certification off afterwards. And your attitude that it will take one week of self-certification for recovery but you don't want to "waste your day off" suggests that you appear to be maxing out the amount of time you can have off without having to have a fit note.

Gordie1975

Thanks for the response, you didnt really answer my question though. i will answer yours though.

I was diagnosed with a a cancerous tumour in my bronchial tube, due to the location of the tumour they cant fully remove it, ultimately they will be removing one of my lunh=gs, but are delaying this for a long as possibe as i am still relatively young, and even then due to the cancer being near the join of the tube they dont feel it wouldnt all be removed and may spread to the other tube.

At the moment they are removing the tumour bit by bit to get it gone as much as they can, once this is complete they want me to start chemotherapy.

The last time i had this operation i thought id be fine, i asked for an extra day off work and had planned what i would be doing in work the next week as i thought an extra day was alll i would need, but and ended up in bed all week as i caught a slight infection but it knocked me for sick all week, i had breathing difficuilties also, not to mention the physical pain i had with the actual procedure left me with and the inabillity to speak without pain.
I got a sick note from the hospital, but they told me it was no different to me self certifying, and said next time you should just self certify and if it goes beyond 7 days, go see your GP and you will get a unfit for work note no probs.

So this time (after the operation) i am taking time off, staying indoors, keeping warm and away from the general public.

As i knew the effects this would probably have on me, i told my manager i would probably be taking a week off to recover, my manager has my days off as fri/sat and sunday as "sick", itd been on the rota since last week, i asked for my days off purposly to be fri sat to cause minimum impact to the buisness as if i was days off mon/tues, then i would be sick fri/sat/sun, meaning id only work 2 days that week.

Im still in hospital now awaiting discharge, so i cant really submit a sick note, the hospital are again recomending i do a self cert for the first week, and if work (or people on this forum) arent happy with that, then i go to my GP on Monday and they will sign me off.

I may well be off more than a week, but the i may be all right, i wont know, but at the moment sat in my hospital be i can hardly talk, and am in pain with my throat.

So, again does anyone know if i submit my sicknote tomorrow, and the store is closed sunday, will i need to get an extra days sicknote from the doctor, or is the fact that i am willing and able to work the sunday mean it just counts as a day off?

Thank you.

Undervalued

Gordie1975 wrote: »

So, again does anyone know if i submit my sicknote tomorrow, and the store is closed sunday, will i need to get an extra days sicknote from the doctor, or is the fact that i am willing and able to work the sunday mean it just counts as a day off?

Thank you.

Well surely you self certify for the next five days up to an including Thursday. Given that you don't work Fri and Sat and the store is closed on Easter Sunday your first day back (if well enough) would be Easter Monday. Or am I missing something?

Or does you employer have rules about requiring a doctor's certificate if self certification joins on to days off / holiday?

It is also worth noting that any form of cancer is automatically a disability for employment law purposes. Where relevant this obliges the employer to make reasonable adjustments to help you.

Gordie1975

Undervalued wrote: »

Well surely you self certify for the next five days up to an including Thursday. Given that you don't work Fri and Sat and the store is closed on Easter Sunday your first day back (if well enough) would be Easter Monday. Or am I missing something?

Or does you employer have rules about requiring a doctor's certificate if self certification joins on to days off / holiday?

It is also worth noting that any form of cancer is automatically a disability for employment law purposes. Where relevant this obliges the employer to make reasonable adjustments to help you.

Thanks for the reponse.
Fri/sat was my days off for this week, next week i am blank as the manager didnt know what i would be off 100%, so has covered my shifts all week just in case, however my days off change every week, it could be any 2 days, i dont think you get days off if you are sick, like if i was off sick mon-fr, i couldnt say "im fine now i will have sat/sun as my days off", if i had been on a day off saturday sunday on the rota and went sick monday t friday, id imagine the rota would have been changed to make my days off monday tuesday, so that i work sat/sun...if you know what i mean.

Theres no rules as far as aware about sickness running to hols, days off.

whats made this a bit more complicated is because its a sunday to sunday, mon-mon is easy its a full straight week.

Thank you again.

sangie595

Gordie1975 wrote: »

Thanks for the response, you didnt really answer my question though. i will answer yours though.

I was diagnosed with a a cancerous tumour in my bronchial tube, due to the location of the tumour they cant fully remove it, ultimately they will be removing one of my lunh=gs, but are delaying this for a long as possibe as i am still relatively young, and even then due to the cancer being near the join of the tube they dont feel it wouldnt all be removed and may spread to the other tube.

At the moment they are removing the tumour bit by bit to get it gone as much as they can, once this is complete they want me to start chemotherapy.

The last time i had this operation i thought id be fine, i asked for an extra day off work and had planned what i would be doing in work the next week as i thought an extra day was alll i would need, but and ended up in bed all week as i caught a slight infection but it knocked me for sick all week, i had breathing difficuilties also, not to mention the physical pain i had with the actual procedure left me with and the inabillity to speak without pain.
I got a sick note from the hospital, but they told me it was no different to me self certifying, and said next time you should just self certify and if it goes beyond 7 days, go see your GP and you will get a unfit for work note no probs.

So this time (after the operation) i am taking time off, staying indoors, keeping warm and away from the general public.

As i knew the effects this would probably have on me, i told my manager i would probably be taking a week off to recover, my manager has my days off as fri/sat and sunday as "sick", itd been on the rota since last week, i asked for my days off purposly to be fri sat to cause minimum impact to the buisness as if i was days off mon/tues, then i would be sick fri/sat/sun, meaning id only work 2 days that week.

Im still in hospital now awaiting discharge, so i cant really submit a sick note, the hospital are again recomending i do a self cert for the first week, and if work (or people on this forum) arent happy with that, then i go to my GP on Monday and they will sign me off.

I may well be off more than a week, but the i may be all right, i wont know, but at the moment sat in my hospital be i can hardly talk, and am in pain with my throat.

So, again does anyone know if i submit my sicknote tomorrow, and the store is closed sunday, will i need to get an extra days sicknote from the doctor, or is the fact that i am willing and able to work the sunday mean it just counts as a day off?

Thank you.

I did in fact answer the question in the first two lines - your first day sick is the first day you are sick, whatever day of the week it is.

I am sorry about your diagnosis, but if you are sick, the fact that your first day sick happens to be a day off is not wasting a day off; and the way you phrased this did give the appearance of attempting to max out your days off. For the purposes of SSP, you don't get paid for the first three days so you submit a sick note immediately, so the longer that you delay, the longer you don't get paid for. This matters whether or not you may also have occupational sick pay. If you are fit to return to work on a day that your workplace is not open, then you report for work the next day as usual and tell them - your self-certification dates will confirm that your last day of sickness was Saturday, not Sunday.

Gordie1975

sangie595 wrote: »

I did in fact answer the question in the first two lines - your first day sick is the first day you are sick, whatever day of the week it is.

I am sorry about your diagnosis, but if you are sick, the fact that your first day sick happens to be a day off is not wasting a day off; and the way you phrased this did give the appearance of attempting to max out your days off. For the purposes of SSP, you don't get paid for the first three days so you submit a sick note immediately, so the longer that you delay, the longer you don't get paid for. This matters whether or not you may also have occupational sick pay. If you are fit to return to work on a day that your workplace is not open, then you report for work the next day as usual and tell them - your self-certification dates will confirm that your last day of sickness was Saturday, not Sunday.

Thank you for that, yes my self cert will end on saturday.
So sunday should be my first day back.
Thanks again.

NewShadow

I'm going to caveat this with 'where I work'.

If you cannot attend work due to ill-health you should notify your manager (or the designated person within your organisation) of your absence by telephone as soon as possible on the first day of absence (that is, the first day you were supposed to be working).

Unless you are claiming SSP, I cannot see a benefit to employers or employees of reporting sickness on non-working days - You may be fit to attend by the time you are required at work.

You would also not normally report a week of sickness in advance - self certification is making a declaration that you were sick for a week - not that you will be.

sangie595

NewShadow wrote: »

I'm going to caveat this with 'where I work'.

If you cannot attend work due to ill-health you should notify your manager (or the designated person within your organisation) of your absence by telephone as soon as possible on the first day of absence (that is, the first day you were supposed to be working).

Unless you are claiming SSP, I cannot see a benefit to employers or employees of reporting sickness on non-working days - You may be fit to attend by the time you are required at work.

You would also not normally report a week of sickness in advance - self certification is making a declaration that you were sick for a week - not that you will be.

You are right that many employers require you to report sickness on the first day of absence, but that isn't the same thing as the first day of sickness. If you work in a Mon-Fri workplace, there would be nobody there to take the report on a Saturday, and as you say, if you are well by Monday, nobody cares. But if you fill in a self-certification having returned on, say, Tuesday, your first day of sickness should be Saturday, not Monday.

And yes, you self-certify at the end of the period, however long that is within one week - it isn't a prediction.

gwynlas

I cannot understand why hospital advising self certification if you have had an operation and unable to attend work. Self certification implies a short illness that you might not have needed to attend the drs for.
If in future they think to dismiss you due to inability to perform due to illness periods of self certification might not carry the same weight as medical certification

Gordie1975

NewShadow wrote: »

I'm going to caveat this with 'where I work'.

If you cannot attend work due to ill-health you should notify your manager (or the designated person within your organisation) of your absence by telephone as soon as possible on the first day of absence (that is, the first day you were supposed to be working).

Unless you are claiming SSP, I cannot see a benefit to employers or employees of reporting sickness on non-working days - You may be fit to attend by the time you are required at work.

You would also not normally report a week of sickness in advance - self certification is making a declaration that you were sick for a week - not that you will be.

Thanks, yes thats what i was thinking, my first day i was supposed to be working was sunday, which is why i was puting that down as the first day.
I forgot to mention though, i get 3 months full sick pay with my employer, and this and the previous week i had off is the first time in 6 years i have ever been sick.