The end of qualified medical certificates!

The efforts of the administration

As we already feared, the complaint to the Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HmbBfDI) did not lead to the abolition of qualified medical certificate. They were merely suspended. Back in the spring, the administration gave the regulation to Medienkontor Hamburg to develop a version that complied with data protection requirements, which they succeeded in doing in the summer. In terms of content, the version did not differ from the original. However, it became apparent that a detailed amendment to the ASPO would have been necessary to give the regulation legal legitimacy. The administration submitted just such a proposal to the 143rd meeting of the Academic Senate (AS) on October 23.

Our efforts

Meanwhile, we were not idle during the last year. As early as the 138th meeting of the AS at the end of May, together with the student representatives in the AS, we submitted a motion to amend the ASPO. We wanted a regulation that would have explicitly required certificates of incapacity for work. In the discussion about this motion, as well as in a later discussion in the Committee for Strategy Development in Studies and Teaching (ASSL), our proposal was rejected. The pretext: there would be a legal constraint to require qualified medical certificates The fact that both our own research and the consultation of three different lawyers showed otherwise was not listened to. Only towards the end of the summer did the administration admit that there was no legal obligation. Under this circumstance, we saw the possibility of resubmitting our request of the 138th AS meeting. On October 23, the first of two AS meetings was held to make a decision between the administration's motion and the student body's motion. On the same day, the general assembly of the student body took place, where the university policy (HoPo) department of the AStA asked for an opinion, which was unanimously against qualified attestations.

The decisive meeting

On November 27, the second reading took place in the AS. After numerous discussions in the run-up to the 144th meeting, the HoPo department of the AStA and the student representatives in the AS carried a proposal to the meeting, which was as follows: As a rule, certificates of incapacity for work should be sufficient to withdraw from an examination. In so-called "suspicious cases", i.e. cases in which the risk of abuse was to be assumed to be particularly high, there should be a form on which the person who would otherwise have issued a certificate of incapacity to work would confirm the incapacity to take an examination by marking with a cross whether the student was incapable of taking the examination. With this measure we took care of the wish of some professors to create a measure to raise the hurdle for the misuse of certificates a little bit and to raise the awareness of the medical profession that they do not certify an inability to work in any context but an inability to take exams.

The result

After some discussion, we were able to get a unanimous vote from the Academic Senate in favor of this proposal!

Qualified medical certificates, release from medical confidentiality, uncertainty about whether symptoms might be sufficient, etc. will thus not exist at TUHH in the future.

The concrete wording of the ASPO and the form will be decided in the academic senate in January. So, in the next examination phase, remember to take
the appropriate check-off form with you to the doctor if you cancel an examination or call in sick for the same examination a second time.