Guest blogger, you seriously don't know what you are talking about. I am a midwife in the community and I have an easy life in comparison to Reynolds- I work 9-5, nominally, but yes, you really DO have days where you do not get time to eat or drink or go to the loo. I have the best pelvic floor ever, the number of days I leave home at 7.30 and get home at 6.30 without having been to the loo or drunk anything are too many to mention. And it's not bad time management, it is planning for ten mins for lunch but being called about a social services case, or a postnatal visit, or a million other interruptions. We are not entitled to an uninterrupted break and so we don't get them. The law says that it's ok for us to work for 24 hours with no sleep and so sometimes we do. Mmmm, safe, and really conducive to health, I don't think. Nobody is saying that skivers shouldn't be taken to task but if you have genuine illnesses certified then why should you be called to account and disciplined about them? You sholud be helped not to get ill so much (I had a period at work at one point where I could start at 8am not 7am because I have ME and early mornings were bad for me) but you can't help being ill, if you're ill! People do this job on the basis of the work and the theoretical job that you're supposed to do. When the reality is so different, and you are always taken advantage of physically and it ruins your life, it's no wonder people don't find it loads of fun. Nobody should HAVE to work like that and it's the only reason the NHS runs- because people do.