The NHS is stretched to its limits. Yet doctors are writing 10 million sick-notes a year for people they cannot ‘fix’, while patients with treatable diseases queue for appointments. This is Britain’s grave error: our hyper-medicalised society has falsely equated illness with unfitness to work—mistaking a social problem for a medical one.
Dr Adrian Massey argues compellingly that we should leave doctors out of it and seek tailored, contractual, employer–employee solutions, but obstacles block this path: over-complex employment law; an outdated benefits system overburdening doctors and traumatising the vulnerable; and a workplace culture that is too inflexible to keep sick employees in work.
Sick-Note Britain is a blistering condemnation of a sham system that works for nobody, and an urgent call to rethink how we manage sickness—for the sake of our economy, our wellbeing, and our health service.