Sickness certificates, from the no-vax boom of requests to general practitioners, “to …

The Fimmg secretary explains the situation

The increase is there and it shows. Just under 20 per cent at the Veneto level, and Verona remains in line with regional data. The numbers speak for themselves, from 15 October onwards compared to the previous days there was asurge in sickness certifications, with an increase in requests that has put i general practitioners. Besieged by messages on Whatsapp, phone calls and impromptu studio visits, but not only. Because there are also those who send threatening emails, even using the pec (certified e-mail).

“Unfortunately, the tones in some cases are absolutely out of place and become intimidating,” the alarm of Guglielmo Frapporti, provincial secretary of the Fimmg (Federation of general practitioners): «a colleague received one in which he asked for certification with a mandatory response to be given within three days, otherwise threatening to report the same doctor for omitting official acts. More and more people get the assistance of a lawyer to write these emails, you can see from the tone of the letters themselves and from the regulatory references necessarily suggested by a lawyer, they are not easy situations to manage. We deal with about 50 or 60 cases per day between visits, phone calls, messages and e-mails, it is a load that highlights even more the fragility of the system ».

The increase in requests is evident for all general practitioners in the area. “Last week the increase was remarkable, he called a lot of people to find out how to behave, now the situation has calmed down a bit even if the requests remain, I think the increase is to be estimated at around ten percent, not by more”. Among other things, in a period in which seasonal evils have begun, from cough to fever and more. «Obviously, seasonal morbidity is also growing with all the pathologies we know», Frapporti goes on, «and as general practitioners we cannot measure everything, if a patient tells us he was sick during the night how can this be verified? We can measure other situations directly, such as pressure, the presence of a possible bronchitis or more, but it is difficult: our relationship is based on mutual trust, we believe our patients and they believe us, but so this relationship risks breaking, it is quite a critical moment for us. On vaccine exemptions we have strict parameters to adhere to and those are very few. The risk? There are people who decide to change doctors but they are a small part, they change little because the way of acting and behaving is common within our category “.

But there are also those who manage to convince patients. “It happened to colleagues and me too, one person asked for certification but I couldn’t grant it, I think I heard her say on her way out that she would have booked the vaccine soon. We swabs do not make it, it seems to us a loophole from the only way that we consider valid to get out of this long period of fight against the virus, vaccination ”, concludes the provincial secretary of the Fimmg. “We are also losing relationships that have lasted for 30 years, but we cannot do otherwise”.