Nuala Ferris was cleared to return to work in one sentence at one appointment, which she now describes as the least useful clearance she has ever received.

Return to work was staged over eleven weeks rather than signed off in one appointment, with the occupational health assessment done before the first shift rather than after the first problem.

Back to work

Nothing in the programme is technologically remarkable. The difference is that somebody is looking at the output on a schedule, and knows who they are looking at.

A signature isn’t a plan. The plan is what hours, doing what, with what happening if it goes badly.

Dr. Sofia Renard, rehabilitation medicine

Rehab in a machinery shed

Cardiac rehabilitation is meant to be twelve weeks of supervised, graded exercise. For patients two hours from a centre, that has historically meant no rehabilitation at all.

Eleven weeks, four steps, one setback in week six. “The setback was in the plan,” she says. “That’s why it wasn’t a crisis.”

Contributing writer

Dr. Sofia Renard

A demonstration byline created for this prototype. Not a real writer, and not a clinician.

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