Authors (including presenting author) :
LUK AWC, WONG KCM, FOK JPC
Affiliation :
Occupational Medicine Care Service (OMCS), NTEC
Introduction :
OMCS offers management for staff with injury-on-duty (IOD), work-related health problems, disability management professional advice, and return to work (RTW) coordination. Care manager in OMCS plays an essential role in providing holistic care and RTW facilitation to injured staff. This is a case study describing successful elements that helped an injured staff walking through the RTW journey from detachment to engagement.
Objectives :
1. Help the injured staff to regain function at work and maintain psychosocial well-being. 2. Enhance occupational health of the injured staff.
Methodology :
A Patient Care Assistant (PCA) suffered from back pain after patient lifting in 2018. She got severe back pain with limited back movement that influenced her work and daily livings. Because of unclear injury description, she had tension with her supervisor about IOD case reporting. She was then detached from her workplace and isolated herself at home. Subsequently, she was desperate about her recovery and developed a dysfunctional belief that returns to work will lead to re-injury. Fear avoidance behaviors making her to be reluctant to engage in work rehabilitation. To help her to walk through the RTW journey from detachment to engagement, 7 successful elements are described as follows: 1. Unconditional positive regard. Show acceptance and empathy to her. 2. Life coaching. Provide psychological support to her and promote active lifestyle which prevent over reliance on passive modalities. 3. Realistic goal setting. Support her functional work engagement with graded exposure starting from a small step. 4. Rapport building. Provide timely support with caring attitude, identify her main concern in RTW progress and tackle with specific solution. 5. Rehabilitation coordination. Coordinate with allied health departments to enhance rehabilitation treatment and provide consistent message to her. 6. Workplace liaison. Provide expectation management to supervisors, solicit workplace support and 7. Onsite coaching. Provide task-specific manual handling operations training and engage peers in the coaching process to emphasize on importance of teamwork which enhances her confidence at work.
Result & Outcome :
She has returned to work after one month of rehabilitation and now resumed functional work in her workplace. Supervisor also recognized her safety awareness at work and assigned her to be a coach to new PCA colleagues. Now, she is active engaged at work with high job satisfaction.
Co-location with:
