Impact of Chronic Pain Patients' Job Perception Variables on Actual Return to Work

Abstract

There is a relationship between preinjury job perceptions and actual return to work after pain facility treatment. Voiced "intent" not to return to the preinjury type of job is highly predictive of not returning to work after pain facility treatment.

Alcohol use self report in chronic back pain—relationships to psychosocial factors, function performance, and medication use

“…2 The experience of stressful events and feeling incapable of dealing with tasks have been described as risk factors for drinking problems. 3 Like chronic back pain disability, 4 attitudes about alcohol use, abuse, and treatment are highly related to workplace influences. 5 There is limited research examining alcohol use among persons with chronic pain.…”

The association between psychosocial work factors and future low back pain among nurses in Hong Kong: A prospective study

“…Stress is considered to be a cause of lowered pain tolerance (Ursin et al, 1993). Linton identi ed other ve psychological work risk factors for future LBP after reviewing 21 studies (Linton, 2001); they are poor job satisfaction, monotonous work, poor work relations, perceived demands/load and received ability to work (Fishbain et al, 1997;Hazard et al, 1996). Magnusson et al (1996) found that job enjoyment was related to musculoskeletal trouble and work absenteeism.…”

A study of factors influencing return to work after wrist or ankle fractures

“…This may be particularly so with occupational or workrelated illness or injury, as efforts at rehabilitation may be complicated by the part played by the job or employer in events leading up to the disability. Current knowledge suggests that the duration of time off work is influenced by the adequacy of treatment of the underlying illness, maintaining contact with work, minimizing time away from work, pain tolerance, perceived disability, coping mechanisms, the availability of workplace accomodation, nature of work, fear of non-recovery, and patient expectations [Fishbain et al, 1997;Grossi et al, 1999;Joy et al, 2001;Cole et al, 2002;Fransen et al, 2002;Shaw et al, 2005].Despite such research, there remain significant gaps in our understanding of the process of return to work following occupational injury, particularly for injury other than back pain. While not as common as work-related low back pain, for which there are about 9-10,000 claims per year to Alberta Workers' Compensation Board (WCB), there are nonetheless over 3,000 work-related fractures reported per year, and these fractures likely cause significant morbidity at both an individual and a population level [Alberta Human Resources and Employment, 2004].…”