GPs to encourage long-term sick back to work

Doctors have been urged to do more to encourage those with a long-term illness to stay in, or return to, work.

New draft guidance from the General Medical Council (GMC) asks GPs to support patients in caring for themselves to empower them to improve and maintain their health, which could see them "encouraging patients, including those with long-term conditions, to stay in or return to employment or other purposeful activity".

The GMC's chief executive Niall Dickson said that GPs play a vital role in improving basic standards of care and claimed that despite the guidance, the responsibilities of GPs begins and ends with providing clinical treatment.

"We don't want to suggest doctors become policemen of the state. It has to be where it is in the patient's best interest that encouragement and support is given," he explained.

Richard Vautrey, deputy chair of the British Medical Association's GPs' committee, claimed that the guidelines fitted in with what a number of doctors already do, adding that employment is seen as being beneficial to the health of the majority of patients, the Guardian reported.

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