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Published on: February 22, 2020
Work status and disability trajectories over 12 months after injury among workers in New Zealand
John Langley, Rebbecca Lilley, Ari Samaranayaka
1School of Health and Social Services, College of Health, Massey University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand. s.l.derrett@massey.ac.nz.
Aim:
To describe work and disability trajectories over 12 months following injury among workers.
Methods:
Workers injured at work or elsewhere (n=2626) were sourced from the Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study, a longitudinal cohort study in New Zealand, with the primary objective of identifying factors associated with disability following injury. Work and disability status was assessed at 3- and 12-months post injury. The measure of disability was the brief WHODAS II 12-item instrument. Participants were dichotomised into 'disability' or 'no disability' groups based on whether their WHODAS score was greater than, or equal to, 10. In terms of 12-month work status, there are 16 different scenarios. These were grouped into 4 categories: sustained work (SW), delayed return to work (RTW), non-sustained RTW, and sustained off-work.
Results:
We had complete information for 1975 workers. The largest group (68%) was SW, 32% of which had disability at either time point. The second largest group consisted of 17% of workers who were classified as delayed RTW, 76% of whom were disabled at either time point. Among the non-sustained RTW group (7%), 52% had disability at either time point. Of the sustained off-work group (8%), 80% were disabled at either 3- or 12-months.
Conclusion:
Although return to work is a useful provider performance indicator of injury compensation and rehabilitation it is inadequate from a wider societal perspective and needs to be complemented by other important outcome measures such as disability status.
