Thanks for commenting. I can appreciate how tedious and time consuming all of those would be. Do the other ‘fitness to’ letters cost similar amounts? I’m just thinking that many pregnant women do need to fly for various reasons past 27 weeks gestation whereas people don’t need to jump out of a plane. Do you have to see the person for the other letters you mention? I wasn’t seen by my GP and the GP asked me no questions; it was all on the midwife’s assessment.

As a GP we get asked for fitness to parachute, fitness to appear on stage for children, fitness to fly, fitness for a patient to have an indian head massage, fitness to do a variety of sports e.g. diving, fitness to have exemption for wearing a seatbelt etc. I have been asked for letters to support having new radiators fitted in a house, fitness to attend school, do exams separately from other children – the list goes on.

Really most of these do not need medical confirmation but many places and organisations ‘require’ them. I would rather get home to see my family after working for 10-12 hours a day seeing patients and treating ill health rather than filling out these form. The NHS pays me to treat the sick not ensure someone is fit to jump out of aeroplanes etc. The only way we can disuade people and companies from making these requests it to charge them.

Could not agree with you more. Teachers are the prime example of a profession that don’t get paid to do all the extras they do.

I guarantee there are plenty of jobs all around the world where employees have to do that extra bit of work whether big or small and they don’t get paid extra for it, so why should we pay-up for such a service. We may as well just throw £20 in the bin.

Consider also that the request has to be read, checked against your records, validated by the doctor, written by an individual, probably checked again before it goes, noted on your records, then the correspondence is addressed, enveloped and posted. For each of these actions, the cost of the individual is not just what they pay, but their overheads as well – an office environment, national insurance, professional indemnity insurance (for the practice) and pension. These costs quickly add up to double what an individual takes home.