Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 Apr;17(4):484-93.
doi: 10.1007/s00586-007-0577-6. Epub 2008 Jan 23.

Patterns of sick-leave and health outcomes in injured workers with back pain

Pierre Côté  1 , Marjorie L Baldwin, William G Johnson, John W Frank, Richard J Butler
Affiliations

Patterns of sick-leave and health outcomes in injured workers with back pain

Pierre Côté et al. Eur Spine J. 2008 Apr.

Abstract

Little is known about the sick-leave experiences of workers who make a workers' compensation claim for back pain. Our objective is to describe the 1-year patterns of sick-leave and the health outcomes of a cohort of workers who make a workers' compensation claim for back pain. We studied a cohort of 1,831 workers from five large US firms who made incident workers' compensation claims for back pain between January 1, 1999 and June 30, 2002. Injured workers were interviewed 1 month (n = 1,321), 6 months (n = 810) and 1 year (n = 462) following the onset of their pain. We described the course of back pain using four patterns of sick-leave: (1) no sick-leave, (2) returned to worked and stayed, (3) multiple episodes of sick-leave and (4) not yet returned to work. We described the health outcomes as back and/or leg pain intensity, functional limitations and health-related quality of life. We analyzed data from participants who completed all follow-up interviews (n = 457) to compute the probabilities of transition between patterns of sick-leave. A significant proportion of workers experienced multiple episodes of sick-leave (30.2%; 95% CI 25.0-35.1) during the 1-year follow-up. The proportion of workers who did not report sick-leave declined from 42.4% (95% CI 39.0-46.1) at 1 month to 33.6% (28.0-38.7) at 1 year. One year after the injury, 2.9% (1.6-4.9) of workers had not yet returned to work. Workers who did not report sick-leave and those who returned and stayed at work reported better health outcomes than workers who experienced multiple episodes of sick-leave or workers who had not returned to work. Almost a third of workers with an incident episode of back pain experience recurrent spells of work absenteeism during the following year. Our data suggest that stable patterns of sick-leave are associated with better health.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Abenhaim L, Suissa S, Rossignol M. Risk of recurrence of occupational back pain over three year follow up. Br J Ind Med. 1988;45:829–833. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baldwin ML, Johnson WJ, Butler RJ. The error of using returns-to-work to measure the outcomes of health care. Am J Ind Med. 1996;29:632–641. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0274(199606)29:6<632::AID-AJIM7>3.0.CO;2-L. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Beurskens AJ, Vet HC, Koke AJ. Responsiveness of functional status in low back pain: a comparison of different instruments. Pain. 1996;65:71–76. doi: 10.1016/0304-3959(95)00149-2. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Butler RJ, Johnson WJ, Baldwin ML. Managing work disability: why first return to work is not a measure of success. Ind Labor Relat Rev. 1995;48:452–468. doi: 10.2307/2524774. - DOI
    1. Cassidy JD, Côté P, Carroll L, Kristman V. The incidence and course of low back pain in the general population: a population-based cohort study. Spine. 2005;30:2817–2823. doi: 10.1097/01.brs.0000190448.69091.53. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms