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Abstract
Objectives Few studies examine the influence of early predictors of work absence beyond 12 months following injury or the time-dependent relative importance of these factors. This study aimed to identify the most important sociodemographic, occupational, health, lifestyle and injury predictors of work absence at 12 and 24 months following injury and to examine changes in the relative importance of these over time.
Design Prospective cohort study.
Setting The Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study, New Zealand.
Participants 2626 injured New Zealand workers aged 18–64 years were identified from the Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study recruited form New Zealand’s monopoly injury compensation provider injury claims register: 2092 completed the 12-month interview (80% follow-up) and 2082 completed the 24-month interview (79% follow-up).
Primary and secondary outcomes measures The primary outcomes of interest was absence from work at the time of the 12-month and 24-month follow-up interviews.
Results Using modified Poisson regression to estimate relative risks, important groups of workers were identified at increased risk of work absence at both 12 and 24 months: males, low-income workers, trade/manual workers, temporary employees, those reporting two or more comorbidities and those experiencing a work-related injury. Important factors unique to predicting work absence at 12 months included financial insecurity, fixed-term employment and long weekly hours worked; unique factors at 24 months included job dissatisfaction, long weekly days worked, a prior injury and sustaining an injury that was perceived to be a threat to life.
Conclusions Important early predictors of work absence at 12 or 24 months following injury are multidimensional and have a time dependent pattern. A consistent set of predictors was, however, present at both time periods that are prime for early intervention. Understanding the multidimensional, time-dependent patterns of early predictors of long-term disability is important to optimally target timely interventions to prevent long-term work disability.
- epidemiology
- public health
- injury
- work disability
- return to work
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Contributors RL was the lead author and is guarantor of this paper. RL analysed the data. GD and SD contributed to the study design, interpretation of the results and the review and editing of the manuscript. All authors approved the submitted manuscript.
Funding This work was supported by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (2007–2013) and the Accident Compensation Corporation (2007–2010) (HRC programme grant ID 10/052).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Obtained.
Ethics approval The New Zealand Multi-Region Ethics Committee granted ethical approval for this study (MEC/07/07/093). Informed consent was obtained from all participants.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement We have a data sharing policy and would consider requests on a case-by-case basis. Please contact sarah.derrett@otago.ac.nz.