“No one will care what you can’t do once they know what you can do.”

By Tiffany Sloan

They’re words to live by for Cara Rodrigues, an occupational therapist and director of Actum Health in Surrey, when working with clients in the clinic’s pain program. “We see more injured workers going back to their pre-injury work than ever. And it’s not about the treatments we provide; it’s about fostering trust and shifting the language we use and getting clients more confident in their bodies again.”

Rodrigues is referring to abilities-focused language. She notes that when clients first come to a pain program, they’ve typically spent the last weeks or months talking about their injury in terms of “limitations” and “disability.” This mindset can be limiting, so the team works on shifting the conversation to how the worker can feel safe to move and function, which is key to their path forward.

Imagine what happens when an employer hears their employee can’t walk for more than 20 minutes; they might think they’d need to find a sedentary role for that person. But if they hear the employee can walk with intermittent seated activities every 20 minutes, it becomes easier to envision potential duties and opens the door to discuss options.

Rodrigues describes a recent client whose physical and psychological assessments resulted in a lengthy list of limitations. “They felt really anxious about how to communicate with their employer about it. So, we just reframed those limitations in terms of what the worker could do. That simple shift helped them feel confident in speaking to their employer about their future work duties.”

Meaningful work is key

There’s no need to wait until a worker is fully or even mostly recovered to take on work duties. “Returning to work is just changing the setting of their recovery and rehabilitation,” says Rodrigues. If work is meaningful, we see some clients respond better than they do with clinic-based exercises.

A return-to-work plan involving light or modified duties is critical to helping an injured worker recover safely and confidently. The key, says Rodrigues, is to make the duties meaningful (relevant to their role and skill set) and graded (gradually building up to their regular duties).

“When workers are on light duties that are unrelated to their usual duties, and they’re doing them for too long, that doesn’t help them see progress. Workers grow to have expectations that change is not possible, that their current state is all they’re functionally capable of.”

Maintaining a connection to work

Returning to work as soon as it’s safe to do so is good for a worker’s health in many ways.

Work provides so much of our daily routine, social interaction, sense of purpose, and even personal identity that losing our connection to work can be incredibly destabilizing, says Dr. Celina Dunn, medical services manager at WorkSafeBC. “The research shows that when people are off work for a prolonged period, they are at increased risk of depression, obesity, substance use, and poverty. It puts a strain on family relationships. They can experience an erosion of personal, social, and work-related skills. And the longer someone is away from work, the greater the danger.”

The best way to combat these risks and speed recovery is to maintain meaningful involvement in life roles — at work, at home, and in the community, says Dr. Dunn. “It’s a two-way relationship: Your body function impacts your participation in these life roles, and your participation in these life roles impacts your body function.”

So how can a worker maintain meaningful involvement with their work before they’re ready to return? There’s plenty that employers can do to help, says Rodrigues — whether that’s inviting the worker for a lunchtime visit or to the company holiday party, or just a regular check-in.

“The most common thing workers say to me is, ‘No one’s even called me to ask how I’m doing,’” says Rodrigues. “Employers don’t need to have specific training in mental health or pain. Sometimes it’s just picking up the phone to say ‘Hey, how’s it going? We miss you at work.’”

Maintaining open lines of communication from the beginning makes it easier later on for the worker and employer to discuss a potential return to work — especially if they’re using abilities-focused language. “When employers can shift the conversation from disability to talking about ability,” says Rodrigues, “they may be pleasantly surprised at the level of productivity and engagement they see from their worker recovering in the workplace.”

For more information, search “return to work employers” at worksafebc.com.

This information originally appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of WorkSafe Magazine. To read more or to subscribe, visit WorkSafe Magazine.