Supervisors' responses to sickness certification for an episode of low back pain: employees' personal experiences
1Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. w.wrapson@auckland.ac.nz
Purpose:
To understand how work supervisors respond to sickness certification for an episode of low back pain based on employees' reports of employer-employee interactions.
Method:
Thematic analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 16 employees who were currently or had recently been off work with an episode of low back pain.
Results:
Two types of initial supervisor response were identified: See you later and take your time and get it right. Both of these relied on the employee returning to work once they were able to do their normal work tasks. Three types of subsequent response were identified: proactive, apathetic and negative. Only the proactive response included actions to encourage and assist the employee to return to the workplace.
Conclusions:
The interactions described by participants suggest that employers and their representatives often postpone actioning to return to work interventions which potentially delays the rehabilitation of the employee.
