When work-related injuries occur, many patients want (or need) to get back to work quickly. Employers, too, would prefer that their employees return to work as soon as possible. But as the treating clinician, it’s your job to ensure not just that the employee returns to work, but that doing so is safe for them and their coworkers.

Whew! That’s a tall order. That’s why it is so critical to focus on the requirements of your patients’ jobs from the outset of treatment. Each treatment plan that you create for injured workers must account for their regular job duties, working forward to get them ready to perform at their highest capacity.

How do you do that? The best approach for a clinician to take is to create a short Job and Life Requirements Questionnaire that is reviewed with each new patient. Understand the basic physical requirement in their work, their social responsibilities and their home life. Bring those actively into the treatment plan and communicate the correlations with each portion of each treatment.

Your task is multi-faceted: You must help the injured worker recover, and not just physically. Their confidence in their ability to perform work duties is critical to their safety, too. You must also, before release, evaluate what is safe for them to return to through the administration of a Functional Capacity Assessment (FCA/FCE).

Data must be precise – that’s why Functional Capacity Assessments are critical to the return-to-work process. FCAs answer that critical question: What can the Employee physically and safely do? Your patient’s doctor, the Employer, an insurance company, case managers and possibly even attorneys will need precise data in order to do their jobs. Everyone is depending upon you to provide accurate information and communicate it effectively.

The KEY Functional Assessment is also designed to measure the participant’s effort level, whether conscious or subconscious, so that all involved parties can feel confident in the decisions made. It functions as a lie detector test for the body identifying if the effort put forth by the patient is their full effort. Once the team has access to reliable and accurate data, pertinent decisions regarding return to work can be made. Now it’s time to put the plan into action, saving Employees and Employers time, money, and undue worry.

Good Endings Start with Good Beginnings.
Begin with your patient’s Life Requirements.
Contact KEY for more information and guidance.