Return-to-work with long COVID: An Episodic Disability and Total Worker Health® analysis, 2023, Stelson et al.

Return-to-work with long COVID: An Episodic Disability and Total Worker Health® analysis
Stelson; Dash; McCorkell; Wilson; Assaf; Re'em; Wei

A growing number of working individuals have developed long COVID (LC) after COVID-19 infection. Economic analyses indicate that workers’ LC symptoms contribute to workforce shortages. However, factors that affect return-to-work from perspectives of people with LC remain largely underexplored.

This qualitative study of people with LC conducted by researchers living with LC aimed to identify participants’ return-to-work experiences using Total Worker Health® and Episodic Disability frameworks. 10% of participants who participated in a mixed-method global internet survey, had LC symptoms >3 months, and responded in English were randomly selected for thematic analysis using NVivo12. 15% of responses were independently double-coded to identify coding discrepancies.

Participants (N = 510) were predominately white and had at least a baccalaureate degree. Four primary work-related themes emerged: 1) strong desire and need to return to work motivated by sense of purpose and financial precarity; 2) diverse and episodic LC symptoms intersect with organization of work and home life; 3) pervasiveness of LC disbelief and stigma at work and in medical settings; and 4) support of medical providers is key to successful return-to-work. Participants described how fluctuation of symptoms, exacerbated by work-related tasks, made returning to work challenging. Participants’ ability to work was often predicated on job accommodations and support. Non-work factors were also essential, especially being able to receive an LC medical diagnosis (key to accessing leave and accommodations) and help at home to manage non-work activities. Many participants described barriers accessing these supports, illuminating stigma and disbelief in LC as a medical condition.

Qualitative findings indicate needs for workplace accommodations tailored to fluctuating symptoms, continuously re-evaluated by workers and supervisors together. Reductions in medical barriers to access work accommodations is also critical since many medical providers remain unaware of LC, and workers may lack a positive COVID test result.

Link | Paywall (Social Science & Medicine)

 

But....at the beginning of the day....why would an employer hirw someone they thought couldn't be trusted.

And if they can be trusted then why assume they are lying about their health.

 

Reminds me of a Facebook post from around 3-4 years ago on a closed group where someone with ME/CFS had been assessed by DWP and advised that they were capable of working for 12 mins per hour. Where in earth do you find an employer offering that .... and how would any employer find your illness credible ?

 

It is the responsibility of a human society to account for and accommodate human sickness.

To understand that people with chronic illnesses and impairments must be included and supported by the rest of society.

The trouble is capitalist societies are set up upon exploitation. They churn through the labouring classes leaving behind a trail of work related sickness and injury. Or punishing conditions of poverty inflicted upon workless workers and their families.

With the scale of this latest pandemic and the inadequacy of the government and corporate response, with the dominant world economies forcing through a concerted policy of non-response upon the rest of the world’s populations there is a massive death toll still unfolding and a mass disabling event still unfolding.

Corporations pressured governments to reduce
regulation designed to protect worker health and safety and conditions and sick pay before the pandemic during the pandemic and now still after a declaration from the richest governments that the pandemic be considered over. Vaccines for some nothing for everyone else.

So yeah corporations whose workers work in non-emergency or safety critical sectors do have to take responsibility for their workers, the ones that they helped make sick either directly through work place conditions or indirectly as lobbyists and beneficiaries of the current paradigm.

Corporations may have to change the way work works. We know that this is possible because it just happened.

Or corporations can shirk these responsibilities and just continue the churn at this accelerated pace.

Meanwhile ‘essential workers’, those who were instructed to get out there and face the deadly virus to keep society functioning and the economy rolling while the nonessential workers stayed home, are still falling victim to capitalisms support for this biohazard and others.

So many more dead or disabled people so many fewer healthcare workers.

I hope these accommodations advised for office work are implemented. But I am doubtful that this will be the case due to the conflict of ideology that will occur if they are. It’s a chip in the myth of individual responsibility. What if workers were to notice and start to question their own expendability?

On the other had it depends for how long non-disabled workers remain a free flowing resource versus just how much more job security can be cut for each sector and how inconvenient it is to keep on hiring and firing.

But looking at air traffic control the only remaining industry allowed to prioritise the mental acuity and physical function of their workers, then looking at the GPs, nurses, consultant specialists, who were not afforded such an opportunity, and evaluating this as a person disabled out of the workforce before I’d barely entered into it, and having topped up my cognitive impairment levels with a wee dose of long Covid, it is my judgment that we’re running out the good stuff. In the UK at least.

So good luck to the office workers. But as you all say up above, I can’t see these measures keeping the wheels on the track for too long.