Sick Notes (Med 3 Fit Note)

A medical certificate note must be signed by a Doctor or a trained Practice Nurse.

The Fit Notes mean your Clinician can give you advice to help you return to work. This is because work can play an important part in helping people to recover from illness on injury. 

There is also space for the Clinician to give advice to your employer about the impact of your illness or injury and can suggest common ways in which your employer can help you return to work such as allowing you to work part time or temporarily or by changing your duties, for example, if you have back pain, avoiding heavy lifting.

Fit notes are also sometimes called doctor's notes, sick notes, medical certificates or doctor's statements.

If you have not seen a Clinician at the practice and we have had no information from a medical professional about your illness, you will not be able to get a certificate without an appointment.

Please book a routine appointment; urgent appointments are only provided for genuine medical emergencies and not for the purpose of certificates.

If you have seen a Clinician at the practice regarding the problem, please see tab 'Request a sickness certificate (fit note)' as you may not need to arrange an appointment to discuss things further.

In either case there are rules governing the issuing of sick certificates and the Clinician may not be able to supply one, depending on the information you provide.

If you’ve been off sick for more than 7 days, please see below:

To request a sick note: 

• Online Request: Med 3 Request
• Email: oakfield.practice@nhs.net and request a form  
• Visit the surgery from 9am to 5pm and request a form  

Please note: If you have not seen a Clinician at the practice and we have had no information from a medical professional about your illness, you will not be able to get a certificate without an appointment.

If you are off work for 7 days or less, you do not need to give your employer a fit note or other proof of sickness from a medical professional.

Your employer 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. This is called self-certification.

Self-certification forms usually include details such as:

• information about your sickness or illness
• the date your sickness started
• the date your sickness ended

These dates may be days that you don't normally work. For example, your sickness could start or end on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday.

Many employers have their own self-certification forms. If your employer doesn't have their own form, instead they may use an SC2 form from HM Revenue & Customs Employee's Statement of Sickness.

Download a template self certification form