Return to work factors and vocational rehabilitation interventions for long-term, partially disabled workers: a modified Delphi study among vocational rehabilitation professionals

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Abstract

Background

Long-term disability has a great impact on both society and workers with disabilities. Little is known about the barriers which prohibit workers with long-term disabilities from returning to work and which interventions are best suited to counteract these barriers. The main purpose of this study was to obtain consensus among professionals on important return to work (RTW) factors and effective vocational rehabilitation (VR) interventions for long-term (> 2 years), partially disabled workers. Our three research questions were: (1) which factors are associated with RTW for long-term disabled workers?; (2) which factors associated with RTW can be targeted by VR interventions?; and (3) which VR interventions are the most effective to target these factors?

Methods

A modified Delphi Study was conducted using a panel of 22 labour experts, caseworkers, and insurance physicians. The study consisted of several rounds of questionnaires and one online meeting.

Results

The multidisciplinary panel reached consensus that 58 out of 67 factors were important for RTW and that 35 of these factors could be targeted using VR interventions. In five rounds, the expert panel reached consensus that 11 out of 22 VR interventions were effective for at least one of the eight most important RTW factors.

Conclusions

Consensus was reached among the expert panel that many factors that are important for the RTW of short-term disabled workers are also important for the RTW of long-term partially disabled workers and that a substantial number of these factors could effectively be targeted using VR interventions. The results of this study will be used to develop a decision aid that supports vocational rehabilitation professionals in profiling clients and in choosing suitable VR interventions.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-13295-6.

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Most cited references 32

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Health providers face the problem of trying to make decisions in situations where there is insufficient information and also where there is an overload of (often contradictory) information. Statistical methods such as meta-analysis have been developed to summarise and to resolve inconsistencies in study findings--where information is available in an appropriate form. Consensus methods provide another means of synthesising information, but are liable to use a wider range of information than is common in statistical methods, and where published information is inadequate or non-existent these methods provide a means of harnessing the insights of appropriate experts to enable decisions to be made. Two consensus methods commonly adopted in medical, nursing, and health services research--the Delphi process and the nominal group technique (also known as the expert panel)--are described, together with the most appropriate situations for using them; an outline of the process involved in undertaking a study using each method is supplemented by illustrations of the authors' work. Key methodological issues in using the methods are discussed, along with the distinct contribution of consensus methods as aids to decision making, both in clinical practice and in health service development.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Maaike A. Huysmans: m.huijsmans@amsterdamumc.nl

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health

Title: BMC Public Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458

Publication date (Electronic): 2 May 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 2 May 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 22

Electronic Location Identifier: 875

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.12380.38, ISNI 0000 0004 1754 9227, Department of Public and Occupational Health, , Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam UMC, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, ; Van der Boechorststraat 7, NL 1081 BT Amsterdam, the Netherlands

[2 ]GRID grid.5650.6, ISNI 0000000404654431, Research Centre for Insurance Medicine, , AMC-UMCG-VUmc-UWV, ; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

[3 ]GRID grid.491487.7, ISNI 0000 0001 0725 5522, Dutch Institute of Employee Benefit Schemes (UWV), ; Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Article

Publisher ID: 13295

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-022-13295-6

PMC ID: 9063173

PubMed ID: 35501737

SO-VID: f07bd1a9-3961-40f9-a667-709e1f13f54b

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 6 December 2021

Date accepted : 19 April 2022

Funding

Funded by: Dutch Social Security Institute

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: decision aid,disability pension,labour experts,insurance physicians,long-term sick leave,return to work

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: decision aid, disability pension, labour experts, insurance physicians, long-term sick leave, return to work

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Return to work factors and vocational rehabilitation interventions for long-term, partially disabled workers: a modified Delphi study among vocational rehabilitation professionals

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Abstract

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Supplementary Information

Related collections

Global Health Next Generation Network

Most cited references 32

Consensus methods for medical and health services research.

The Delphi technique: a worthwhile research approach for nursing?

Long term sickness absence.

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Contributors

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Article

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