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Medical evidence based on claimant’s comments
I am preparing for an appeal and have a piece of medical evidence which on the face of it is supportive but which is littered with ‘she tells me…’, ‘she says…’. I recall seeing some case law (but can’t remember the name) to the effect that if the doctor does not comment otherwise, he/she is taken to be adopting the claimant’s own assessment of his/her condition. Can’t find this on rightsnet and wondered if anyone else has seen it and can point me in the right direction?
I don’t know about the case law, but both in Citizens Advice training and in legal practice I always understood “she tells me” to have precisely the opposite effect: it is carefully distancing yourself from something that you cannot verify for yourself. I have always understood medical evidence in this style to be likely to be less persuasive than where the doctor expresses something without the qualification, as that is then indicative of his/her own assessment.