This began three years ago, when the old "sick note" became a "fit note".

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The doctor gave me a sick note for stress.

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GPs tend to give their own patients the benefit of the doubt, and a worker who feigns illness and gets a sick-note to wave under the boss's nose is harder to manage than one who has been tackled at an earlier stage.

ECONOMIST: Health

She had removed him from the classroom and he had been sick, the note said.

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My husband does not get more sick or depressed because I have a career, as you make note of.

FORBES: Readers Say

We could hope, as we listened, that on this great issue, like others demanding answers now -- bringing our fiscal house in order, restoring equality of opportunity to our economy, ending our country's sick obsession with guns -- that future Inaugural addresses would be able to note the kind of material progress that we have seen with regard to combating racism or ending wars.

CNN: Obama's America, better than what Founders imagined