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oapen-20.500.12657-596862022-11-24T03:11:30Z Sick Note Millward, Gareth history, welfare, United Kingdom, social security, medicine, employment, absenteeism, disability, politics bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBJ Regional & national history::HBJD European history::HBJD1 British & Irish history bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBL History: earliest times to present day::HBLL Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBT History: specific events & topics::HBTB Social & cultural history bic Book Industry Communication::M Medicine::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine Sick Note is a history of how the British state asked, ‘who is really sick?’ Tracing medical certification for absence from work from 1948 to 2010, it shows that doctors, employers, employees, politicians, media commentators, and citizens each concerned themselves with measuring sickness. At various times, each understood that a signed note from a doctor was not enough to ‘prove’ whether someone was ‘really’ sick. Yet, with no better alternative on offer, the sick note survived in practice and in the popular imagination—just like the welfare state itself. Sick Note reveals the interplay between medical, employment, and social security policy. The physical note became an integral part of working and living in Britain, while the term ‘sick note’ was often deployed rhetorically as a mocking nickname or symbol of Britain’s economic and political troubles. Using government policy documents, popular media, internet archives, and contemporary research, this book covers the evolution of medical certification and the welfare state since the Second World War, demonstrating how sickness and disability policies responded to demographic and economic changes—though not always satisfactorily for administrators or claimants. Moreover, despite the creation of ‘the fit note’ in 2010, the idea of ‘the sick note’ has remained. With the specific challenges posed by the global pandemic in the early 2020s, Sick Note shows how the question of ‘who is really sick?’ has never been straightforward and will continue to perplex the British state. 2022-11-23T08:33:24Z 2022-11-23T08:33:24Z 2022 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/59686 eng application/pdf Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 9780192865748.pdf https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sick-note-9780192865748 Oxford University Press 10.1093/oso/9780192865748.001.0001 10.1093/oso/9780192865748.001.0001 b9501915-cdee-4f2a-8030-9c0b187854b2 245 Oxford open access
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Sick Note is a history of how the British state asked, ‘who is really sick?’ Tracing medical certification for absence from work from 1948 to 2010, it shows that doctors, employers, employees, politicians, media commentators, and citizens each concerned themselves with measuring sickness. At various times, each understood that a signed note from a doctor was not enough to ‘prove’ whether someone was ‘really’ sick. Yet, with no better alternative on offer, the sick note survived in practice and in the popular imagination—just like the welfare state itself. Sick Note reveals the interplay between medical, employment, and social security policy. The physical note became an integral part of working and living in Britain, while the term ‘sick note’ was often deployed rhetorically as a mocking nickname or symbol of Britain’s economic and political troubles. Using government policy documents, popular media, internet archives, and contemporary research, this book covers the evolution of medical certification and the welfare state since the Second World War, demonstrating how sickness and disability policies responded to demographic and economic changes—though not always satisfactorily for administrators or claimants. Moreover, despite the creation of ‘the fit note’ in 2010, the idea of ‘the sick note’ has remained. With the specific challenges posed by the global pandemic in the early 2020s, Sick Note shows how the question of ‘who is really sick?’ has never been straightforward and will continue to perplex the British state.
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