Wow, what a fucking useless doctor's note!

The BBQ Pit
1

So, I had my first of two doctor’s appointments today. I’ve been suffering from excruciating back pain and headaches since sometime last week.

Turns out I’ve got 1) a kidney infection and 2) severe eye strain from reading the required 400 or so pages per week for my ridiculous course load. So tomorrow I’ve got to go get reading glasses, which I haven’t worn for the better part of a decade.

But today, I spent 2 1/2 hours at the doctor’s office fully expecting to hear that I had meningitis or something equally horrible, only to find it it’s my kidneys. And my eyes. (BTW, fuck you, kidneys and eyes)

I missed class today to go to the doctor, and a couple times earlier this week and last week when the pain was too bad and the Advil wasn’t helping. So I asked for a doctor’s note. The receptionist or whoever it was that took my money filled out a little form stating my absence was medically necessary. When she handed me the note, I saw that she’s made it for today. Only.

"Oh, I missed a few days earlier this week and last week. Could you- "

“We don’t back date them.”

“Oh… Ok.”

WTF? You’ve given me an excuse for missing class today, when I have the other paperwork from today’s visit clearly dated for today. What fucking good is your stupid note? For all my professors know, I could have woken up in excruciating pain this morning and immediately rushed to the doctor (Ha! Like I have the money to do that. The last time I went to the doctor that didn’t require an emergency room visit, it was to my pediatrician’s when I was still in middle school. I can’t fucking afford to rush off to the doctor every time’s somethng’s wrong, only to be told it’s the flu, get plenty of rest, drink a lot of Og damn fluids. I only went to the doctor today because I thought I had fucking meningitis)

So, thanks a fuckload. Hopefully my profs aren’t idiots and will understand this infection that’s had me in agony for the past week didn’t just show up this morning. Or maybe the fucking optometrist can give me a note that’s worth a damn.

2

Why do you need a doctor’s note to miss class? You’re not in grammar school. Did you miss a test or something?

In any case, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me that a doctor’s office wouldn’t give you a note excusing your absences from before they even examined you.

3

I can appreciate the doctor’s position. They didn’t examine or treat you during those other absences. They don’t know if you were genuinely sick for those days, or if you were off doing keg stands. Signing an excuse note in those circumstances strikes me as unethical.

They do still take attendence in some college classes, and count that against your final grade. I had some profs who considered more than three abscences without a medical excuse or family tragedy to be grounds for failing.

4

When I was at a university I came down with some nasty virus and was given a doctor’s note to excuse me for a week. Some courses do require attendance. I took a language course and because in-class dialogue was critical to the course, you had to have a doctor’s note (I can’t remember the exact details) to avoid being penalized and losing marks.

IIRC the doctor’s not excused me for the day I turned up at Health Services and was good until the following Monday (the doct expected me to be hlaf-dead for a week). It did not cover the day before when I first started to feel like roadkill. Luckily, my prof was understanding and figured if I had a note for Tuesday through the following Monday, then the Monday I missed I was probably legitimately sick.

They can’t verify you were sick until they diagnose you and confirm you’re sick.

5

I’m taking university classes and it’s been made clear that attendance at chemistry labs and such is mandatory. Missing even a few without a medical excuse risks a failing grade.

6

I always thought a medical note was not to confirm that you went to the doctor on a particular day, but that you are indeed sick and should be an acceptable excuse for a couple of days, I would think.

7

Yes, all my teachers record attendence, and it counts against my grade. I also missed turning in a couple of small, in-class assignments. I emailed my teachers yesterday explaining my situation. I would have done it earlier but I figured one or two absences wasn’t a big deal (most give you 2 unexcused absences without penalty).

As for not back-dating the notes, I’ve never dealt with a doctor’s note before. Like I said, last time I went to the doctor I was still in middle school, so my mom handled any notes. But I explained to the doctor I’d been having the symptoms since last week, I don’t know why he’d have any reason to doubt that. I wasn’t asking for a note going back a month or two, just to cover the past 6 days or so.

I also thought it was odd that the doctor himself didn’t write it, the receptionist did. He was the one who heard me describe my symptoms and their duration.

But honestly, how many people go to the doctor at the first sign that they’re sick? Don’t most people wait to see if they feel better in a few days, and then go if they don’t? I dunno, maybe things are different for people with insurance, but I’m sure as hell not paying $100 to get an excuse because I missed class because I was hungover or some shit.

8

At my workplace, it’s standard for the receptionist to type up a nice but standard note. If you get the doctor to do the note, he or she will grab a prescription pad and scrawl a half-legible sentence or two.

I also suspect that if you wanted the note back-dated, the doctor or receptionist, to cover their own ass, will write something like, “So-and-so claims these symptoms started on (previous date),” which is perfectly acceptable Medical English but sounds fishy to most people, as if the doc is doubting your report.

9

That’s why they usually let you take a couple days off a semester without providing a note.

Also, if your professors aren’t total dicks, they’ll probably take into account that you do have a doctor’s note confirming that you were sick and needed medical treatment, and cut you some slack for the days not covered by the note. They’re probably well aware of the limits of both what a doctor will and will not write a note for, and the limits of the average college student’s budget for medical expenses. Just remember to talk to them about it when you show them the note, and see if they’ll let you make up the missed days.

10

That’s actually exactly what my PCP does. I get a note on a prescription page that says “Kat is sick. She can go back to work on (date).” And he asks me what date I want to go back. He doesn’t put a starting date on it, though, so I’m covered even if I wait the 2 days to go in.

On the other hand, I technically don’t need a note to prove I’m sick, I need a note to prove I can go back to work–i.e. that I’m not (or no longer) contagious or that I’m physically able to work.

11

This, as others have noted, is a pretty common requirement for classes. I followed the rules dutifully until my final semester, when for completely excusable reasons I missed a total of 3 weeks of class in one semester. I let my prof know all the different reasons I wasn’t able to attend (oral surgery drug complications, jury duty, and the flu, for those who care), and when I presented my jury duty excuse he rolled his eyes and said, ‘‘What’s this? Oh, god, I don’t need THIS. Nobody makes up something like that.’’ As I walked away bewildered, he muttered, ‘‘It kills me. You guys are always so surprised when I treat you like adults!’’ sigh He was so dreamy…

12

This is a tough one. Like so many things in life, you can chalk it up to a small group of assholes ruining it for everyone else.

Several times a week, I’ll get someone in with what could generously be called the sniffles who wants to be off work for a week. Oh, and I’ve missed the last week, too; can you back-date it for me?

I had to crack down on this in my clinic when one of my PAs nearly lost us some worker’s comp accounts after he became known for giving everybody all the time off they wanted, forwards and backwards. They got suspicious when everybody who got hurt started asking for him specifically. Now we absolutely do not back date WC excuses and we don’t write them out for more than a week at a time, with re-evaluations in between. (There are special cases, but those are usually going through me anyway.)

For regular excuses, I’ll give most people one day back, and if it’s a patient I know and trust I’ll go back two days. But no further than that.

13

You shoulda slipped him a $20.

:wink:

14

You know, after hearing stuff like this from many teachers and professors, I was shocked to get out in the working world and discover that people don’t assume I’m lying about stuff like this. People are empathetic when one is sick. My boss would rather I take my germs home post-haste and not get everyone sick. Jury duty is something everyone sighs and nods about. When I had surgery, I was stunned by how helpful, sympathetic and accommodating everyone was. When a family member dies, you’re treated with respect. You’re generally treated with respect and dignity unless you’ve demonstrated you’re an asshole.

Whereas in school, you were guilty until proven innocent. I’ve seem some professors sneer at pneumonia, broken bones, car accidents, funerals, national guard duty (to work at ground zero the week after 9/11, no less). One refused to accept doctors’ notes, even for serious illness, and made you appeal to the dean.

Why do they think that treating you like a liar = treating you like an adult? Do I just not work for/with enough assholes?

15

OP, when you are denied a request out in the world somewhere, instead of automatically assuming that the request is denied because the denier just wants to be a bitch, or hates you, you may want to consider that maybe there’s a reason you can’t get what you want, like office policy.

16

Yeah, don’t take it personally— maybe they’re dicks to everyone!

17

Shit, I command my students to stay away if they’re sick. I only ask that they give a heads up when they know they’re not going to make it out. In fact, I just sent a response to a student thanking him for the notice that he would be absent, and wished him well.

People are going to take advantage, yes, but I figure they will be karmically rewarded for their deceit at some point. Not really my place to assess if people are sick or not. I should note that I teach relatively small courses of graduate students (< 30). I do understand why profs in huge classes that grade on a curve are real sticklers about this, though.

18

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a young man the other day at work. He’s 20, balding, and on Propecia to prevent hair loss.

Him: Yeah, I need the 5mg tablet, because it comes in generic, but the 1mg doesn’t, and I’d save money.

Me: Sorry, but the doctor doesn’t okay that. You’re to be taking 1mg of it, and you can’t split a tiny little pill like that into 5 equal pieces. Sorry.

Him: I need to talk to the doctor. Ask the doctor to call me. click

Later on

Me: Hi, Baldy (not his real name), it’s Alice. I gave the doctor your message, and he asked me to call you and let you know that he’s busy seeing patients, but that you can’t have the 5mg pill, because you can’t cut that tiny little pill into 5 equal pieces. Sorry.

Him: I have an appointment scheduled in February. Please cancel that. click

Me: :rolleyes:

19

I’m trying to figure out the downside. :smiley:

At my previous job, a cardiology office, my boss told one of his patients to get some exercise (within certain limits) because that would improve overall health. The patient went out and joined a health club, signing a long-term contract, then barely ever went for a few months. When she got tired of making the payments and didn’t go back, she called our office and left a message, asking my boss to write a medical excuse for her to give to the health club in an attempt to get out of the contracted payments. :rolleyes: Naturally, he refused.

20

During my first marriage in those horrible days before prozac, my battle with depression was much harder. After a separation and terrible depression while I was teaching in a new assignment, I finally had to be hospitalized.

The policy of the mental health unit was to neither deny nor confirm that any particular person was a patient. The principal of the high school where I was teaching decided to double check my husband’s story that I was hospitalized.

He called the hospital. The hospital connected him with the ward and the ward would neither confirm nor deny. This man was used to getting his way. So he continued to call the ward asking the same question until the nurses came to me and asked if I wanted to talk to him. I had no idea what he wanted and so I told the nurses that they could give him the same number that we gave to members of our familes.

In no time at all he called and began questioning me! All the fight was gone out of me or I would have hung up on him. I tried to answer as best I could, but he obviously just either didn’t believe me or didn’t believe in depression.

On another day my substitute teacher called!! She was having discipline problems with one of my classes so the principal gave her my phone number in the mental hospital!!

Then one of my students (who had a crush on me) was found peering at me through the windows in the locked doorway at the end of the hall. (I suppose my substitute had told him where I was; I don’t know.)

After five weeks of hospitalization I was released. But I had a lot of anxiety and I was nervous about returning to school. When I took my doctor’s statement to the principal he looked at it and said, "Your husband works for this hospital, doesn’t he?

I was just livid. My husband did not work for that hospital. He did work at a state hospital for the mentally ill. The hospital I was in was a private Catholic hospital. I told him that he was welcome to verify anything that he wanted to about my hospital admission with the doctor who had written the statement.

He also did not want to pay me for the snow day that occured during my hospitalization. Other teachers did not work that day but got paid anyway. I told him that if he did not follow the contractual agreement and pay me, then he could not expect me to work the makeup day at the end of school when the other teachers had to earn that snow day pay. (Since the end of school is always the busiest, he changed his mind and decided to pay me.)

Of course, I should have sued him for harassment, but I just wasn’t back on my feet emotionally enough to do it.