Posts: 15244
Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2016 10:54 am
Not enough info in the story.
But for the record, the "sick days" they're referring to actually seem to be similar to the Short Term Disability Leave most employers offer, which is also typically 4 months. These are not "sick days" that you can take 1 or 2 at a time when you have errands to run. You have to be continually sick for several days (usually a week in most employers) before you are placed on leave. Typically these are for people with serious illnesses or injuries.
In most workplaces though, the employee has to submit a disability claim to a third-party case manager or the employer's own Occupational Health Nurse, who reviews the medical evidence and the employee's job description, and denies the absence or approves it for a specified period of time.
Googling the AHS policy though, for Managers and Executives, the policy simply says the employee must request the leave from their manager and advise them of the duration, and the manager has the "right" to request medical info. But it looks like there's a lot of discretion left to the manager and probably even in the healthcare field like AHS, people aren't comfortable reviewing the medical details of people they work with and/or telling them no. I bet in a lot of situations the manager isn't qualified to make a decision on medical fitness anyway. It's not like some Accounting manager is going to get a request and say to the employee: "You want 14 weeks off for chemotherapy? No way, I say that's about ten weeks tops!"
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