As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.”
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
@hoppla @quixoticgeek I see the same framing in France and it’s dangerous.
I know that I had my GP angry at me for working with the flu, or when I took pills because work was awful. I’m glad he gave me the talk (even if… well… I continue working from home when I’m sick, like an idiot) -
@hoppla thank you for saying this as a GP. My wife has struggled with chronic pain and other serious medical issues all stemming from a workplace injury for which she never received long term compensation or support for. She has a deep work ethic and feels constant guilt and shame for not being able to work. She feels responsible for her own disability while at the same time feeling deep frustration with the systems and workplaces that have so obviously failed her.
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In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority.
and that is why work should be optional, so the majority of people who do want to actively contribute to society can do that with agency and without all the stress, and the rest can live whatever life they want for themselves
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
@hoppla We complain about not having enough GPs, or about people overloading emergency rooms for peanuts. But suddenly it's perfectly OK to ask people who have a light flu and who know they just need 2-3 days rest, to consume medical ressources just to have that paper filled and stamped.
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@hoppla thank you for saying this as a GP. My wife has struggled with chronic pain and other serious medical issues all stemming from a workplace injury for which she never received long term compensation or support for. She has a deep work ethic and feels constant guilt and shame for not being able to work. She feels responsible for her own disability while at the same time feeling deep frustration with the systems and workplaces that have so obviously failed her.
@chris I'm so sorry. I can only try to imagine what it's like for your wife (living with pain, and maybe with the quieter ache of feeling unseen by the systems that were supposed to catch her). That loss of identity, of feeling needed in the ways she once was, sounds like its own kind of grief. I hope she finds moments, even small ones, where she feels like herself again, not because she's contributing, but just because she's here. 🫶
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
It goes far deeper than that. Look at any organism, it needs to do enough to keep itself and offspring alive. Survival. I look at work as a genetic part of us. Those who work live those who don't won't.
I was a caseworker for welfare (US style, begging) the stats were people were on support programs an average of 2.5 years. Even those we consider fraudulent have to work to keep hearth & home. People with disabilities live? on a tiny stipend. We have been harnessed to the plow.
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It goes far deeper than that. Look at any organism, it needs to do enough to keep itself and offspring alive. Survival. I look at work as a genetic part of us. Those who work live those who don't won't.
I was a caseworker for welfare (US style, begging) the stats were people were on support programs an average of 2.5 years. Even those we consider fraudulent have to work to keep hearth & home. People with disabilities live? on a tiny stipend. We have been harnessed to the plow.
Work has required more and more from each of us for less for us. I'm out of the 40's, when we could have a few extras. Many of us. Education was affordable as was food, housing, transportation & medical wasn't being used as a cudgel to get more and more $. Even then many didn't have access. I made $1.25hr minimum wage & had a roof, transport, food while going to college & a beer after. Instead of going forward we had those at the top stripping us of what little we had gained.
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@chris I'm so sorry. I can only try to imagine what it's like for your wife (living with pain, and maybe with the quieter ache of feeling unseen by the systems that were supposed to catch her). That loss of identity, of feeling needed in the ways she once was, sounds like its own kind of grief. I hope she finds moments, even small ones, where she feels like herself again, not because she's contributing, but just because she's here. 🫶
@hoppla thank you
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
@hoppla I’d include workplace bullying as a factor
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
Another factor in absences from work (or leaving the workforce completely)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0025775326001417
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@feisty_lemming @ABScientist thx for your input guys! Personally I don't see that too often and don't hear that often from colleagues. Can you recommend a landmark paper on this topic?
@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
There's not only guys on the Internet just by the way.
All too many are underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
"Psychosomatic"
"Depression from social isolation 'during' Covid" (Covid is not over in fact), might well be social isolation as consequence of no energy after work because of (possibly undiagnosed or misdiagnosed) LC.
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@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
There's not only guys on the Internet just by the way.
All too many are underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
"Psychosomatic"
"Depression from social isolation 'during' Covid" (Covid is not over in fact), might well be social isolation as consequence of no energy after work because of (possibly undiagnosed or misdiagnosed) LC.
@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
And when they after a while can't work (fully) like this, even at the price of giving up the rest of the life, they suddenly fall officially sick, from said "depression from social isolation" or "burnout".
Just as possible way how you might come to see LongCovid sufferers but possibly not seeing them *as* LongCovid sufferers.
Unfortunately not so many gps even dare to diagnose LC even though they're IIRC technically allowed to.
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@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
And when they after a while can't work (fully) like this, even at the price of giving up the rest of the life, they suddenly fall officially sick, from said "depression from social isolation" or "burnout".
Just as possible way how you might come to see LongCovid sufferers but possibly not seeing them *as* LongCovid sufferers.
Unfortunately not so many gps even dare to diagnose LC even though they're IIRC technically allowed to.
@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
And who thinks about LC in the cases that might be just a bit less severe than the very stereotypical ones (but severe enough to cause issues)...
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@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
And who thinks about LC in the cases that might be just a bit less severe than the very stereotypical ones (but severe enough to cause issues)...
@hoppla @feisty_lemming @ABScientist
LC is very not rare (link I sent, and others sent info too).
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Another factor in absences from work (or leaving the workforce completely)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0025775326001417
And where less social contact really has health impacts (causality this way round instead of "I'm chronically ill and experiencing the typical let down that most chronically ill people experience"), make social contact safer again.
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
@hoppla People should more often avoid work and go on strike. They make all the profits, but the corporate king takes several million from it, while the employees are still cheated out of their minimum wages.
So join a union!
https://jacobin.com/2023/10/uaw-strike-big-three-historic-wins-worker-power-tentative-agreements
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@hoppla I’d include workplace bullying as a factor
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You probably know this, but I am going to say it anyway:
"people don't want to work" is not worth struggling over.
It is an obvious piece of fascist propaganda.
A far-right myth of an undeserving people "mooching off our poor hard-working job-creators".
What a joke. It's so clumsy and obvious.
Throw it down and step on it.
If peopel are getting sick more: It's covid. It's car exhausts. It's hateful middle-aged men with power. All of that is enough to make a person sick.
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@zash I can't applaud loud enough for this view. In a world shifted by AI we need a radical new understanding about what we want to call work. As far as I comphrend social sciences is working on it for decades already.
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As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.
If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.
In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.
#MedMastodon #GeneralPractice #PrimaryCare #WorkStress #MentalHealth #SickLeave #HealthPolicy #Germany #Arbeitswelt #Burnout #PublicHealth #Reform #AU #Arbeitsunfähigkeit #Gesundheitsreform #gesundheitspolitik #gesundheitssystem
@hoppla Not to mention how happy you will be if everybody who just stayed home for a day when they ate something wrong now comes in to your office for a sick note instead. which of course will be longer than one or two days.
