If you are requesting a sick note for a condition that you have recently been seen in hospital for, either in the emergency department or for a planned procedure, it is the hospital’s responsibility to issue you with a sick note for the full anticipated duration of your recovery.
This forms part of the hospital contract that all NHS organisations signed up to in April 2017. Failure to issue appropriate sick notes wastes millions of GP appointments each year, and created unnecessary additional bureaucracy for GP sugeries.
Please note: Your GP will not issue a fit note for a condition recently treated in hospital. Please contact the hospital where you were treated.
If you’ve been off sick for more than 7 days
To request a sick note:
- send us an online request
- phone or visit the surgery from 10am to 6pm
If you’ve been off sick for 7 days or less
If you’re off work sick for 7 days or less, your employer should not ask for medical evidence that you’ve been ill. Instead, they can ask you to confirm that you’ve been ill. You can do this by filling in a form yourself when you return to work. We call this self-certification.
Find out more about sick notes on the NHS website.