Factors Related to Return to Work and Job Modification After a Hand Burn

Abstract

Occupational therapy aims to help patients resume their occupations. Therefore, we must know their work status after our intervention. We collected demographic and burn-related data from patient charts and analyzed it to determine the work status of former patients with burned hands and what influenced their returning to work. From 284 former patients with burns, we screened 159 with burned hands, 108 of whom were interviewed through the telephone about their work status. We used logistic regression analysis to analyze factors for having work, returning to work, the length of time required to return to work, and job modifications. We found that 1) having preburn employment increased the likelihood of having postburn employment; 2) being the primary wage earner in a family increased the likelihood of having work and of a return to work postburn; 3) a longer stay in the hospital, and burn injuries on both hands and trunk increased the time required to return to work; and 4) being older and having a smaller percentage of total body burn area decreased the likelihood of returning to a job modified because of a burn injury. Returning to work was affected not only by burn-related factors but also by general demographic and employment factors. We urge occupational therapy departments to include a return-to-work program in their routine services to improve the chances of patients with hand burns to return to work. We strongly recommend that a multicenter prospective study of hand-burn injuries should be performed.

Employment Outcomes After Burn Injury: A Comparison of Those Burned at Work and Those Burned Outside of Work

“…[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Also, hand burns are associated with delayed return to work status. 40 This study did not collect burn location information, and therefore the authors are unable to comment on the impact of hand burns on employment outcomes. Employment outcomes are an imperfect measure of quality of life.…”

“…3,17,40 It is possible that the physician's perception of job safety and difficulty in understanding available accommodations in the workplace delays return to work orders after injury at work. 41 Posttraumatic stress symptoms are common after burn injury.…”

Review of Burn Injury Research for the Year 2009

“…Earlier identification of patients at risk for not returning to work or prolonged reentry to work may aid occupational therapist in designing programs tailored for these patients. 67 The next article assesses neuropathy after burn injury. The authors evaluated 36 patients with burn injury-related neuropathy via electrodiagnostic testing.…”

Work-related Transitions Following Hand Injury: Occupational Therapy Scoping Review

“…Occupational therapists can assist in matching job demands with that of their client's functional ability. Five articles indicated a trend for clients to return to alternative employment after sustaining a hand injury (e.g., Hwang et al, 2009;Peters et al, 2016). In Craig et al (2017) study, just over half (51%) the respondents returned to work; however, only one participant returned to the same job in the same capacity.…”