A semi-structured interview guide with open questions was used (Table 1 and Additional File 1), designed to focus on the GP's own experience of sick-listing and to give descriptions of concrete situations.
The 2008 Commonwealth Fund population-based survey collected data on care experiences of sick patients residing in eight high income countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New-Zealand, United Kingdom, United States) [ 4].
Do Something for Someone Else The experience of being sick for an extended time means that you become the center of attention.
Various psychological theories have been proposed including unconscious motivation (childhood deprivation or trauma) creating a positive experience of the sick role: emotional upset was kissed better, emotional wounds were bandaged.
We asked them whether being surrounded by hundreds or excitable people was either adding or detracting to their overall experience of being sick at St Mary's hospital.
2. Breaking the data into parts: The text was divided into meaning units by the first author, discriminating units that highlighted the experience of being sick-listed.
To bracket preconceived assumptions, the first author wrote down her thoughts about the experience of being sick-listed before starting the interviews.
Among physicians working in orthopaedics or psychiatry, the ORs were higher (1.65 and 1.46, respectively) compared with in internal medicine, for experiencing handling of sick-leave spells of short duration (<14 days) as very or fairly problematic.
Furthermore, we cannot generalize from these results to individuals who have no experience of long-term sick leave.
This perception of at least one of our participants, reflects our own experience of working with sick doctors, and may be much more widespread.
