The effect of demographic and social factors on return to work of injured workers with musculoskeletal disorders.

OBJECTIVES

This paper aims to explore the effects of demographic and social factors for those suffering from work-related injuries with musculoskeletal disorders and their employment status after discharge within three months.

METHOD: The employment status and compensation-related information was caught by adopting telephone follow up with the designated data collection questionnaire; other demographic characteristic and social factors were obtained by reviewing injured workers' original admission records.

RESULTS

In total sixty-eight injured workers were involved with a 67.6% return to work rate. Time of hospitalization (t=2.34, p=0.02) and area of registered residence (x;(2)=8.37, p=0.02) significant differences were found between the return to work group and non-return to work group. The only predictor found by using Logistic Regression analysis was the length of hospitalization (OR=0.978, 95%CI: 0.959-0.998).

CONCLUSIONS

The shorter the length of hospitalization during the rehabilitation process, the greater the rate of return to work for those workers suffering from work-related injuries with musculoskeletal disorders.