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.
Acute care was never the weak point. The ambulance was fast, the intervention was routine, and discharge came in five days. What almost failed was everything after.
Uploads were reviewed twice weekly. The calls that followed were rarely about anything dramatic — a heart rate recovery that had drifted the wrong way across four sessions, that sort of thing.
A signature isn’t a plan. The plan is what hours, doing what, with what happening if it goes badly.
Illustrative composite
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.
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.”
