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8287478 Investigating differences in return-to-work for workers with work-related chronic pain and concurrent psychological injuries in British Columbia

oemed · 2025-10-06 · canonical JSON source

2 visible annotations · policy: published · automated confidence ≥ 75.00%

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Objectives To investigate differences in time for return-to-work (RTW) among psychological, chronic pain, and concurrent psychological with chronic pain injuries and to identify the most influential factors affecting the likelihood of RTW for each injury type.Methods Workers’ compensation claims data were used to identify workers (n=414,507) with an accepted time-loss claim due to work-related psychological, chronic pain, concurrent psychological with chronic pain injuries, or other injury types occurring between 2012 and 2019, with up to 3 years (1095 days) of follow-up. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze differences in time to RTW. Multivariate logistic regression was used to assess the role of socio-demographic and work characteristics in determining the likelihood of RTW for each injury type.Results Descriptive statistics reveal substantial differences in days to RTW after injury, with concurrent psychological with chronic pain having the longest durations (median=1095 days [IQR:1095 – 1095 days]), followed by chronic pain (median=1095 days [IQR:327 – 1095 days]) and psychological (median=422.5 days [IQR:74 – 1095 days]). All other injuries had a median of 21 days [IQR:7 – 83 days]. Variables such as older age and smaller firm size reduced the likelihood of RTW across all injury types, while other variables had injury-specific effects. For example, men were less likely to RTW compared to women (OR:0.86 [95% CI:0.77 – 0.96]) for psychological injury; workers with lower wages were less likely to RTW compared to those with higher wages (OR:0.58 [95% CI:0.52 – 0.64]) for chronic pain; and, health occupations were less likely to RTW for concurrent psychological injury with chronic pain (OR:0.49 [95% CI:0.25 – 0.94]).Conclusion There were large differences in RTW across injury types, and various characteristics impacted the likelihood of RTW differently across injury types. The small proportion of workers who had RTW after 3 years for concurrent psychological injury with chronic pain injuries warrants further research.Funding WorkSafeBC Research Training Award