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PSYCHOLOGICAL HARASSMENT: ATTACKING A DOCTOR WHO ISSUES A MEDICAL CERTIFICATE OF CONVENIENCE

09 Décembre 2024 In cases of psychological harassment, in order to establish the causal link between the perpetrator's behaviour and the damage to the victim's psychological health, judges are particularly sensitive to the production of a medical certificate which, because its author has technical expertise and is external to the facts, carries significant evidential weight.   In law, according to established case law, the occupational physician is the only person who can hear the employee, the employer and the co-workers, and can establish a causal link between the employee's deteriorated psychological state and his professional context.   Litigation cases often involve medical certificates of convenience issued by various doctors, which can lead to serious disciplinary action. The validity of the medical certificate must therefore be challenged before the Conseil de l'Ordre, which is then a formidable weapon before the judge, as the certificate no longer has any value.   (CSP art. R 4127-76):   ‘The practice of medicine normally includes the drawing up by the doctor, in accordance with the medical observations he is in a position to make, of certificates, attestations and documents the production of which is prescribed by legislative and regulatory texts’.   Concrete examples from the case law of the Chambre Nationale des Médecins:   - Haphazard assertion of a causal link between the victim's mental state and the deterioration in her working conditions, when the doctor was unable to observe this personally. - Sanctioning of a doctor who mentions ‘ an anxiety-depressive decompensation as a reaction to a situation of personal conflict ’. - Sanctioning a doctor who qualifies the facts in legal terms or attributes them to an identified person. ‘The existence of ‘professional moral harassment “ is an assessment that ” cannot be made on the basis of findings of an exclusively medical nature that doctors are entitled to make on the basis of the examination of their patients ’. - As a result, one psychiatrist was temporarily banned from practising medicine for three months for having mentioned a situation of ‘ malaise with intense anxiety in the workplace (as a result of psychological harassment and suffering at work) (massive anxiety and sleep disorders) ’. - Another was given a warning for having questioned whether he was ‘ endangering others “ and attested to ” professional mistreatment ’. - The doctor was sanctioned for appropriating the victim's statements rather than reporting what the patient had said. As the Conseil national de l'ordre des médecins reminds us: "While he may report what the patient has said about the origin of the condition observed, or about the causes of the condition or injury observed, he must take care not to appropriate them if he has not been able to verify their veracity. .