Ottawa doctors see spike in demand for sick notes from public servants

Some doctors in Ottawa say the pile of paperwork they're doing every day has been steadily growing as more public service workers seek doctor's notes in order to receive accommodations to work from home.

"The numbers are building up," said Dr. Alykhan Abdulla, a family physician in Manotick. "So, this has only started since September, we're at about two to five accommodation requests per week."

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He says there are legitimate medical reasons people are seeking accommodation but there's also a need for healthy skepticism.

"You have to have a conversation. Does this make sense? Does it not make sense? Does it meet the criteria that the government has for accommodations? Or is it something more about standing in opposition against returning back to three days a week," Abdulla said.

"Environmental allergies, too much light, too much noise, not having an actual desk, being more worried about COVID in the environment. These things become a little bit more concerning because they don't have true medical correlation or substantiation for the reason why they need the accommodation," he said.

The president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) says he's not surprised to see the uptick.

"It speaks to the work-life balance and the controlled work environment that our members discovered over this last four years," said Nathan Prier. "For a lot of our members working from home meant better mental health, physical health and just better concentration and focus and productivity especially. And that's not just kind of like anecdotal throw away information that's Statistics Canada's own data."

Prier says some people who had accommodations before the pandemic are having to put in new requests to be accommodated.

"Managers are also sick of having to go and be hall monitors and check off bums in seats rather than do their work," said Prier.

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat does not have data on how many requests for accommodation have been received or granted, adding that requests are handled by each government department.

It says each request is assessed on a case-by-case basis and should be addressed "without resorting to a formal request for accommodation, to the extent reasonable."

"Managers should proactively discuss with employees any barriers they may encounter and define solutions that will help address them in the workplace," it said in a statement.

Abdulla says the increase translates into an hour or two more of paperwork each day.

"I don't want to be a policeman; I don't want to be an adjudicator. That's not my job, my job is to look after people's health care," Abdulla said.