Long COVID and return to work: a qualitative study 2022 Kohn et al

Abstract

Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to an increasing number of patients with ‘long COVID’. Long COVID is the persistence of symptoms for weeks or months after an infection by SARS-CoV-2. It often impacts on the professional life of affected people.

Aims
The aim of this study is to understand the experiences and needs of people with long COVID in relation to their return to work.

Methods
A qualitative study, combining individual interviews and online forum discussions, was performed early 2021, as part of a larger mixed method study on the needs of long COVID patients in Belgium.

Results
One hundred and thirty-four people participated in the study. Participants described various clinical symptoms precluding their return to work. They also face sceptical reactions from employers and colleagues and a lack of support from the social welfare system to facilitate their return to work. These barriers have various impacts, including psychological ones, likely to compromise the professional future of long COVID patients.

Conclusions
While the analysis of patients’ experiences shows variation in long COVID patients’ experiences with return to work, it may help occupational physicians and healthcare practitioners to better take up their crucial role in the return to work of long COVID patients, including raising employers’ and colleagues’ awareness of the specific difficulties related to long COVID.

Paywall, https://academic.oup.com/occmed/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/occmed/kqac119/6884033

 

Why does no one ever consider that return to work may not be possible or desirable for some in at least in the short term, and recognise return to work for many may not even be a long term option?

If we accept some at least of people with Long Covid have ME/CFS and that only 6% of people with ME/CFS will recover and that some 75% (not sure if this is a real figure or if I just made it up based on the idea of 25% severe, 50% moderate and 25% mild) are either moderately or severely impacted then this unflappable positivity may be counterproductive, even toxic. Rather ‘occupational physicians and healthcare practitioners’ should be establishing what activity levels are currently safe and stable for those who experience PEM (ie have ME/CFS) and seeing what form and quantity of work if any is possible within their current physical, cognitive and orthostatic thresholds for triggering PEM.

 

Medicine is the critical factor to both. The entire social safety net around illness is built on medicine making decisions about who is ill and who isn't in the same sense as legal issues are decided by judges in courts of law. Medicine is refusing to take this role, so obviously it fails. This is not just unsurprising, it's deliberate. There is a huge amount of literature over beliefs in the "sick role" and other nonsense like this.

Somehow, even though this is an official process where the critical component is refusing to assume its role, this responsibility is not recognized.

They're at fault. It's not even recognized even though it's obvious. How does that "help" them? Their active role is described like it's a fully passive thing in which they have no agency, as if they are bound by codes written in stone. The no-blame approach to medicine is disastrous, they aren't helpless little lambs, they make those choices and back them up clearly. Wrong, but very clearly.