Return to Work Planning for Injured Workers
When a worker becomes physically unable to complete the demands of his job, nobody wins. Business owners loose a productive worker and must find or hire a replacement while the worker’s source of income is reduced and possibly eliminated. He may even face a long-term physical condition that could take years to resolve. Getting injured on the job is a constant and real fear, especially in physically demanding jobs. Fortunately, industrial rehabilitation therapists can help return an injured worker to their job quickly and safely. A physical capacity evaluation (PCE) is an integral component of this process. What is a PCE?
PCEs for Worker Assessment
Physical Capacity Evaluation is an important component of worker rehabilitation. A PCE is an evaluation of an injured worker to determine if and/or when he is ready to return to either light duty or regular duty work. It gives clinicians information regarding an injured worker’s ability to perform tasks required by his job. This information can be used to develop a return to work program, identify work accommodations and assist in workers’ compensation case closure.
Following a musculoskeletal injury, PCE’s are a useful tool to help make recommendations for returning to work or activity, determine disability and devise a rehabilitation plan of care. PCE’s provide an objective measure of a worker’s safe functional abilities, compared with the physical demands and positional tolerances of a job. PCE examines and evaluates the worker’s ability to safely perform physical work-specific functions, such as manual material handling activities and positional tolerances. A PCE measures endurance and activity tolerance and provides objective documentation that estimates a worker’s ability to perform physical demands at different levels over a period of time. By measuring the ability of a worker to perform functional or work-related duties, you can estimate his potential to sustain these abilities over time and be successful after returning to work. In addition, PCE’s can guide return to work and job placement decisions and programs, provide disability evaluation and rating, determine function in non-occupational settings, provide feedback for medical and rehabilitation treatment intervention and planning and provide insight into post-offer functional evaluations and pre-employment screening.
Return to Work Programs
The second specialized service is return to work programming, often referred to as work conditioning. This is a structured, goal oriented and work specific plan for injured workers. Functional assessments are an essential aspect of a work conditioning program as it is based on the identified deficits that prohibit a worker’s return to work. A functional assessment is performed at the onset of treatment, midway through the program and at completion of work conditioning. This allows the therapist to establish, monitor and evaluate current capabilities and work-specific goals.
Work Conditioning
Once the acute stage of an injury is addressed, the focus of rehabilitation should change to address the functional restoration of work-specific duties. Work conditioning programs address flexibility, strength, endurance, coordination and work related functions with the end goal of returning to work. Work conditioning programs use either real (on site) or simulated (in clinic) work activities to restore physical, behavioral and vocational functions. In addition, the program addresses issues of productivity, safety, physical tolerances and worker behaviors.
During treatment and/or evaluation other less tangible factors are observed such as a worker’s willingness to participate and what level of effort is being put forth. How does pain interfere with accomplishing work tasks? Can the worker follow directions and follow through with a task? And what effect any given work task has on various reported symptoms.
Physical capacity evaluations are essential in getting injured workers back on the jobsite. Without them, clinicians overlook a vital aspect of the return to work process and could place workers in harms way.
541-306-6175, Janet Kadlecik is an Occupational Therapist and Certified Weight Trainer, specializing in industrial medicine. She is the owner and clinical manager of Work Capacities, LLC since 1992. Her office is located in the Pilot Butte Medical Center in Bend, Oregon.
