Medical appointments — Scope | Disability forum
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Medical appointments

Basilsmum
Basilsmum Community member Posts: 3 Listener
edited November 2018 in Work and employment
I am thinking of applying for a job, but I know I have 10 weeks of a structured weight loss/ exercise programme coming up. It is 3 hours a week, and I really hope it will help with my physical disabilities. Would an employer - even a new one - need to let me have the time off? Would I have to make up the time?

Comments

  • Sam_Alumni
    Sam_Alumni Scope alumni Posts: 7,671 Disability Gamechanger
    I dont know how an employer would view these appointments Im afraid. I don't know whether it would be classed as a medical appointment?

    I hope someone can offer more helpful thoughts soon!

    Scope
    Senior online community officer
  • siobhan1
    siobhan1 Community member Posts: 79 Pioneering
    Sorry thought I replied to this. I'm not an employment advisor but for the last two years I've had medical appointments a couple of times a week on average and worked in different places.

    Unless you are asked by an occupational health or HR department I wouldn't disclose to the recruiter about anything and you don't have to unless your illness will affect your ability to do your job and you still couldn't do it with reasonable adjustments in place.

    For example if you were being employed to specifically do one task and there was nothing they could do to adapt your job so that you could complete that one task. I can't operate machinery due to medication so I would have to tell them that.

    I have applied for admin jobs when i was younger where the job description had lots of different things but making refreshments for visitors I couldn't do as carrying cups from the kitchen was dangerous. I didn't disclose it beforehand as I could do most of the job and a reasonable adjustment was putting a hot water canteen in the meeting room and I would top up the tea bags and coffee sachets as needed.

    I would treat appointments exactly the same. If you have appointments that you can work around then that's usually fine. I have a medical appointment every Monday around 3pm. So if the job description said they needed someone to specifically cover every Monday afternoon I would disclose the appointment beforehand to see what they could do.

    I have found that different types of employer treat medical appointments differently. This is only in my experience and depends on how inclusive the organisation is and how many people they employ:

    Private sector: all must be taken in your own time as annual leave or hours made up if on flexi time

    Council: hospital appointments, full time credit. Doctors and dentist, you can go but flexi time must be made back.

    Civil service: 2hr credit for any type of appointment.

    All of them included travelling to and from the appointment within the hours credit and also I had to attend my workplace for at least some time during the day or it got marked down as leave. The only exception was pre-booked surgery where i was an inpatient and the civil service gave me 3 days special leave with pay at managers discretion.

    These are things I would try to find out about the company you work for before accepting any job. Good luck x

Brightness

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