Australia’s incessant need for doctors certificates

Being from a country that doesn’t have government paid healthcare for all, I find it incredibly ridiculous that over here you need a doctors certificate for this, that, and the other thing.

For example: You’re sick. You need to stay home from work. Fair enough, but you need a doctors certificate. Yes, even though you know that  you have the flu and there’s nothing the doctor can actually do about it, you still need to drag your sick bottom out of bed and to the doctors office where you will sit uncomfortably in the waiting room for at least half an hour, just to tell the doctor you have the flu and need a doctors certificate saying that you are, in fact, sick. Yes, you would be far better off lying in bed at home, but you gotta have that certificate.

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Some employers allow you to have an entire day off sick before you need the certificate (i.e. you’d need to get it to stay home a second day). Wow, isn’t that great?! (yes that was sarcasm, in case you didn’t get that)

Sometimes you’re feeling quite ill, but there aren’t any offensive bodily fluids escaping from either end, so you decide to go to work anyway. I mean it’s not like you can just stay home to recuperate, you’d have to drag your sick self off to the doctor uselessly anyway, so you might as well drag your sick self out of bed and actually get paid for it.

Then you go to work and can’t give it 100% because you feel like death warmed up. Since you’re there instead of in bed at home where you should be, everyone else catches it too. The next day, everyone doesn’t feel like dragging their sick selves out of bed to the doctors for their stupid certificate, so they all go to work too. Now everyone is sick and only working to 50% because you all feel like death. What a great idea it was for employers to require a doctors certificate! Very productive (there’s that sarcasm again…).

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Or say I’m sick, and the kids are sick. I want Aaron to stay home with me to help out, but we’d have to get to the doctor. He can get a certificate to say that we’re sick and he’s helping. Yes, a certificate for the one who isn’t even sick.  But I don’t want or need to go to the doctor. This scenario happend earlier this week. Daniel was vomiting all night (for the first time ever), plus diarrhoea, and then I got the runs too.

I couldn’t go to the doctor. I had the sort of diarrhoea that doesn’t wait for anyone. You have to get to the toilet or it comes anyway. How would I get to the doctor without accidentally pooping myself on the way there? No thanks. Plus what could the doctor do anyway? I just had to ride it out.

And what about the money? Medicare is paid for by the government, i.e. taxpayers. So how much taxpayer money is wasted on ridiculous trips to the doctor just to get a stupid piece of paper to say that you are sick?

Plus, you don’t actually have to be sick to get the certificate. You can just go to any doctor, not your usual doctor, not one that knows you or your history, tell them you’ve got cramps, or the trots, or whatever, and they’ll write you a certificate. They don’t live with you, follow to the bathroom to see if you do indeed have water coming out of your bottom, or interrogate you to find out if your claims are true. Nope, they have so many patients to see, probably half of whom just need that piece of paper, that it’s in and out as quick as they can possibly move you.

Full time employees get 5 days of sick leave per year. Paid. So why do workers need to “prove” that they are sick? What difference does it make? They have 5 days of sick leave for a reason. If they want to waste them on hangovers from binge drinking , watching movies all day for the sake of it, or something like that, then whatever, it’s their 5 days. If they get sick later and need to take unpaid leave, then that’s what they have to do. If they do it all the time, then they’d get fired. So what, it’d be their own fault. We’re talking about adults here, not 5 year olds who say they have a tummy ache so they don’t have to clean their room.

You’d never need a doctors certificate for a sick day in the U.S. For one thing, millions of Americans don’t have health insurance. And health care is expensive over there. Most people wouldn’t stay home from work even if they were bottom-is-like-a-tap sick if they had to pay $85+ just for a piece of paper confirming their sickness.

Not to mention that the majority of health insurance over there is part of the employment package. The employer pays for the health insurance. So an employer certainly isn’t going to make the employee get a doctors certificate when the employer is the one paying for it. If everyone had to do that, the price of insurance would go up and then the employers would have to shell out more money for health insurance, or not offer it at all, driving millions more to the uninsured status.

I was thinking about writing about this today when I got a text from Hannah’s family daycare provider saying that I’d need a doctors certificate stating that she’s well, otherwise she can’t go to daycare on Thursday (how did she know Hannah was sick? She’s my friend, and saw it on Facebook. Note to self: share less on Facebook). Say what? A well certificate.

“Are you serious?” I texted back. “I need a certificate when she’s not going to your house for 2 more days and she’s not even sick today?”

Now I wasn’t mad at her or anything, I know it’s not her rule. Well maybe it is, and then I’m going to look like an ass, but I’m assuming it’s not (note, I wrote this yesterday, and now we’ve been to the doctor, and he says it’s a new government initiative) . It probably sounds mildly reasonable to people who grew up here, but I didn’t.

So now, I have to waste my morning going to the doctors office (instead of spending one on one time with Hannah while Daniel is napping), that’s filled with highly contagious people who are only there to get their stupid certificates. Daniel, Hannah and I will have to sit there next to all the sick people when we are not sick, and hopefully not infect ourselves with who knows what whilst we are there. All to get a piece of paper from my doctor who unless Hannah has any obvious signs of sickness (swollen this or that, blocked this or that, fever, you know, stuff like that), will write of piece of paper, and that’s it. He’s not at home with us, she could be pooping herself 10 times a day, and he’d have no idea. Of course I’d never send her to daycare like that, but you get my drift.

And then there’s the gym. You have to sign up in advance to put your kids in creche on a particular day. If that day comes and your kid wakes up sick and you can’t go, you have to either pay $5, or take them a doctors certificate. So $5 out of your own pocket, or $65+ out of the governments.

I don’t have any kids in school yet, but I’m sure you’d need a doctors certificate there too. Sigh.

There are people, many, many people in the world who can’t afford to go to the doctor when they desperately need to. And here we are, forced to go to the doctor needlessly, clogging up the system and costing the government lots of money. Ridiculous. I wonder how many lives could be saved if instead of going to the doctor for a doctors certificate, we could stay home and recuperate whilst that money would instead fund a trip to the doctor for someone who actually needed it. In a third world country, one of our doctor visits could pay for heaps of doctor visits. It’s so unfair. Sigh.

Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous?

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Copyright 2012 Sheri Thomson

Breastfeeding: Would you do it in public?

I’ve never been one for formula because a) breast milk is very good for babies, b) formula is expensive and I’m…well…cheap, and c) formula seems to require way too much effort for my liking.  Sterilise bottles, mix the formula, heat it up, wash all the bottles. Sigh.

So what happens when a fully breastfed baby is taken out for the day?  Sure, you could express some milk and bottle feed that to the baby.  But some babies, like mine, won’t take a bottle.  To them, a bottle is just an icky plastic thing that someone is trying to shove in their mouths instead of the warm nice booby where they can snuggle up with mommy while having their meal.  A bottle in the mouth induces a wild flapping attack complete with screaming.  Anyone looking on would think the baby is being cruelly tortured.

What do we do?  The baby has to be fed.

Well, I’ll tell you:  I just whip the girls out wherever I am.  Sure if there is a mothers room, I’ll go there to feed Daniel.  They are much easier.  They have nice plush chairs to sit on, a little play area for Hannah, and best of all, they are out of the public eye.  Of course not all places have these awesome mother’s rooms, so often I have no choice.

Like the other week, when The Jess and I took the kids to the city (and by the city, I mean Sydney) to visit Aaron at work for lunch.  Sydney is about an hours train ride from where we live.  We could drive, but driving in the city is a bit scary, and finding parking is virtually impossible and ridiculously expensive. So, train it was.  We got there alright, but by the time we started for home, Daniel was hungry.

No worries, I just fed him on the train.  Everyone else looked very uncomfortable.  No one would sit next to me, opting instead to stand up.

“That’s disgusting.”  I heard one teenager tell her friend.  Well how do you think you got your nutrients when you were a baby?  It didn’t bother me any, my baby was hungry, and no one could even see anything.  Except for the back of a baby.  A baby head was in front of my boob, obscuring it from view, a baby body was in front of my bare stomach (it had to be bare, you gotta pull your shirt up to let the boob out.  Unless you’re wearing a very low top and have floppy boobs (I have neither).  Then you can go over your shirt.) hiding it as well.  I put Daniel’s head in front of me before pulling my breastfeeding bra down, so there is no nipple to be seen the entire time.  Ok fine, except when he decides to pull off and smile at me, but I can’t really control that.  Plus it’s adorable.  But even then, only someone sitting beside me would be able to see it.

Tuesday, Jess, the kids, and I, had to pick up some stuff Aaron bought GraysOnline  .  They have this big area with lounges where you wait while they get your stuff and call your number.  Daniel was hungry.  I sat down and fed him.  He wasn’t finished when they called my number.  I stood up and went to the counter, still feeding Daniel as I walked.  Boy did I get some strange looks.  My stomach was hanging out that time.  Can’t really hide it when standing….

Then we went to Costco where I saw a lady walking around breastfeeding while shopping.  I wanted to hug her.  I thought it was great.  The baby was hungry, she fed it.  Why do people think that’s so weird?  It’s not like there’s anywhere to sit and feed a baby at Costco.  I suppose you could sit on one of their demo outdoor furniture settings (I may have contemplated such a thing…), but I don’t think they would have appreciated that too much.

So would you breastfeed in public?  Why or why not?

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