Table 3.
Proportions of board‐certified specialist (n = 178) and nonspecialist (n = 73), respectively, working in neurological clinics, regarding different situations concerning sickness certification, and p‐values for differences between the two groups
| Items | Nonspecialist | Specialist | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At least once a week | Never or almost never | At least once a week | Never or almost never | p‐value | ||
| When handling sickness certification tasks, how often do you experience lack of time… | ||||||
| to manage patient‐related aspects? | 74.0 | 6.8 | 80.7 | 2.8 | .018 | |
| for further education, supervision, or reflection? | 57.1 | 14.3 | 65.5 | 8.6 | .017 | |
| How often in your clinical work do you… | ||||||
| experience that your competence in insurance medicine is not sufficient? | 11.3 | 7.0 | 9.7 | 26.3 | .004 | |
| write other types of certificates e.g. for applications regarding disability pension? | 8.2 | 19.2 | 22.0 | 5.6 | .000 | |
| Patient‐related aspects | experience conflicts with patients about sickness certification? | 4.2 | 23.6 | 3.4 | 38.6 | .031 |
| feel threatened by a patient in connection with sickness certification? | 0.0 | 84.9 | 0.0 | 93.1 | .043 | |
| issue sickness certificates to patients without seeing them (e.g., by telephone)? | 15.1 | 20.5 | 26.6 | 9.6 | .008 | |
| Collaboration‐related aspects | or your healthcare team participate in coordination meetings with social insurance and/or employer regarding sickness certified patients? | 0.0 | 72.6 | 4.0 | 40.1 | .000 |
| or your healthcare team have contact with employers in ways other than via the coordination meetings? | 0.0 | 83.3 | 0.0 | 60.2 | .001 | |
| refer/send patients to occupational health services? | 0.0 | 60.3 | 0.0 | 37.9 | .002 | |
| confer with other physicians when handling cases involving sickness certification? | 6.8 | 13.7 | 1.7 | 41.8 | .000 | |
| have contact with the employment offices regarding sickness‐certification cases? | 0.0 | 72.6 | 0.6 | 35.0 | .000 | |
| lack for someone (e.g. a coach or case manager) who coordinates measures for the patients? | 21.1 | 22.5 | 11.4 | 33.1 | .041 | |
| How problematic do you generally find it to… | Very | Fairly | Very | Fairly | ||
| assess the optimum duration and degree of sickness absence? | 18.1 | 47.2 | 8.6 | 41.4 | .008 | |
| make a plan of action or of measures to be taken during the sick leave? | 16.4 | 34.2 | 7.5 | 29.3 | .006 | |
| make a long‐term prognosis about the future work capacity of patients on sick leave? | 31.5 | 39.7 | 18.3 | 37.7 | .010 | |
| consider, together with the patient, possible lifestyle and life situation changes? | 12.3 | 38.4 | 6.3 | 17.8 | .000 | |
| discuss and know how to deal with other psychosocial problems when handling a patient on sick leave? | 13.9 | 41.7 | 3.5 | 30.1 | .000 | |
| handle situations in which you and a patient have different opinions about the need for sick leave? | 19.7 | 45.1 | 4.1 | 25.1 | .000 | |
| handle situations in which you and other members of the healthcare team have different opinions about sickness certifying a patient? | 0.0 | 9.7 | 2.3 | 4.1 | .002 | |
| handle long‐term sickness certifications (91–180 days)? | 25.0 | 44.4 | 18.3 | 34.9 | .002 | |
| handle very long‐term sickness certifications (>180 days)? | 41.1 | 24.7 | 23.1 | 28.3 | .000 | |