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ISSN 1051-9815 (P)
ISSN 1875-9270 (E)
Impact Factor 2024: 1.7
WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation is an interdisciplinary, international journal which publishes high quality peer-reviewed manuscripts covering the entire scope of the occupation of work. The journal's subtitle has been deliberately laid out: The first goal is the prevention of illness, injury, and disability. When this goal is not achievable, the attention focuses on assessment to design client-centered intervention, rehabilitation, treatment, or controls that use scientific evidence to support best practice.
WORK occasionally publishes thematic issues, but in general, issues cover a wide range of topics such as ergonomic considerations with children, youth and students, the challenges facing an aging workforce, workplace violence, injury management, performing artists, ergonomic product evaluations, and the awareness of the political, cultural, and environmental determinants of health related to work.
Dr. Karen Jacobs, the founding editor, and her editorial board especially encourage the publication of research studies, clinical practice, case study reports, as well as personal narratives and critical reflections of lived work experiences (autoethnographic/autobiographic scholarship),
Sounding Board commentaries and
Speaking of Research articles which provide the foundation for better understanding research to facilitate knowledge dissemination.
Narrative Reflections on Occupational Transitions, a new column, is for persons who have successfully transitioned into, between, or out of occupations to tell their stories in a narrative form. With an internationally renowned editorial board,
WORK maintains high standards in the evaluation and publication of manuscripts. All manuscripts are reviewed expeditiously and published in a timely manner.
WORK prides itself on being an author-friendly journal.
WORK celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2015.
*WORK is affiliated with the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (CAOT)* *WORK is endorsed by the International Ergonomics Association (IEA)* *WORK gives out the yearly Cheryl Bennett Best Paper Award*
Abstract: {\it Objective:} This study looked at female hospital cleaners and home help personnel who continued working despite problems or pain in their musculoskeletal system and where there was a risk of increase in sickness absence. The aim was to determine whether supportive intervention for these personnel at the workplace had an effect on the way that they experienced the physical and psychosocial aspects of their working environments. {\it Methods:} The design was prospective with non-rando-mised…intervention and reference groups. A selection of 55 questions about physical and psychosocial working environment from a national survey were used. Comparisons were made between intervention and reference groups and with data on a selection of the Swedish population of people in these professions. {\it Results:} The results showed that in the hospital cleaners' intervention group the introduction of new cleaning materials and new cleaning methods seemed to contribute to a reduction in workload during the intervention period, which in turn gave them a better chance of taking rest breaks during working time. In the home helps' intervention group the results showed that the group had had a reduction both in workload and in more responsible tasks, and at the same time the psychosomatic stress reactions reduced after the intervention. {\it Conclusions:} The results indicate that effects on the working environmental conditions as experienced could be obtained by a general multi-component support program at the workplace, but the number of variables influenced by the program was very small. The relatively limited effects may be explained by the fact that the impact of a support program depends on how well the remedial measures fulfil the need for such measures either at the workplace, in a work group or among the individual people at the workplace. This emphasises the importance of designing effective analysis tools for judging what remedial measures are needed before the measures themselves are tried out.
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Keywords: workplace intervention, physical and psychosocial working environmental conditions, hospital cleaners, home help personnel, women, musculoskeletal diseases
Abstract: {\it Objective:} To determine the effect of work posture on musculosketal complaints in Israeli dentists. {\it Methods:} The population included 60 male dentists mean age was 46.0 (\pm SD 8.66), 30 worked in sitting position and 30 were altering…positions. Study population completed the standardized Nordic questionnaire and informative form concerning recipient's practice of dentistry, bio-demographic variables and questions about workloads. {\it Results:} Musculoskeletal symptoms in the last 12 months were localized primarily in the lower back and in the neck (55% and 38.3% respectively). There was a significant correlation between the time spent sitting and the severity of low back pain (r = 0.41, p = 0.01). On the other hand there was no significant correlation between time spent sitting and other musculoskeletal complaints (r = - 0.16). {\it Conclusions:} Dentists who work in the sitting position have more severe low back pain than do those who alternate between sitting and standing despite the fact that those who sat at least 80% of the time worked less hours and had less of a workload during their working hours. This suggests that altering position should be recommended to dentists. An intervention study, however, is needed to demonstrate that changing posture will decrease the prevalence of low back pain in dentists.
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Keywords: sitting position, altering position, workload, practice of dentistry
Abstract: {\it Objective:} The purpose of this study was to identify what information people with acute and chronic back pain, health care practitioners, employers and case managers felt should be included in an educational brochure for recently back-injured workers. {\it Study design:} Four focus groups were convened, each comprising several representatives from one of the four constituencies. Participants rated 32 information items regarding their inclusion in an educational brochure. Ratings were tabulated for ranking and for…group comparisons. {\it Results:} While consensus was strong for most information items, there were apparent differences between the groups for several items relating to work resumption, medical attention, and legal or compensation consultation. {\it Conclusions:} Perceived educational needs of back-injured workers may differ from those of their health care practitioners and from their employers or insurers. Future efforts to prevent back disability through education should include evaluation of the informational needs of injured workers.
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Abstract: This paper describes a structural sequential process aimed to enhance the quality of life of a 29 year old man through the application of assistive technology (AT). The client had life-long severe multiple disabilities, showed increasing fragility and decreasing functional abilities that resulted, among other problems, in a problem with toileting. The process involved a thorough assessment and evaluation of the client, his physical, cognitive and perceptual skills involved in the performance of the task,…requirements of the task, the technology, and the task environment. A clinical reasoning model for the provision of AT was applied during the process to identify the functional deficits of the client with respect to the problematic task. The approach enabled a multidisciplinary team of university-affiliated professionals including physical and occupational therapists, an ergonomist, a rehabilitation engineer and care providers in an institution for developmentally disabled people to determine the primary attributes of a technological intervention. The process resulted in the selection of an appropriate piece of AT followed by its modification and adaptation in order to address the specific needs of the client. The client's toilet use was improved in a manner that ultimately contributed to enhancing the quality of his life. Projections for further improvements of the quality of life of the client in this institution were also discussed.
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Abstract: A study of Australian experience in the state of New South Wales (NSW) suggests that private sector underwriting of workers' compensation insurance risk plus insurer competition on premium price may put downward pressure on benefits for injured workers, inhibit rehabilitation, and cause related cost increases for taxpayers and employers. Insurer underwriting also increases workers' compensation administrative costs and means an unnecessary loss of investment income for government and industry. An emerging and better…alternative for the Australian community is for government and industry to underwrite a national workers' compensation scheme and to fix premium and benefit requirements which are competitively administered by insurers. In such a regulatory environment insurer inability to compete on premium price should promote competition to provide effective services to help employers prevent injury, assist rehabilitation and contain cost. National standards are necessary to enable widespread dissemination of comparable, reliable information on the outcome of health, rehabilitation, dispute resolution and return to work services. This is required to assess the competitive performance of service providers in order to ensure effective operation of the market to achieve scheme objectives. Holistic, multi-skilled and objective rehabilitation professionals are needed who can clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of their actions in assisting injury prevention, worker rehabilitation, and safe return to work across a range of industry contexts.
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Abstract: {\it Objectives:} It may be helpful for occupational therapists who promote enabling occupations among persons with chronic pain, to understand the relationship between the persons feelings of meaningfulness, comprehensibility and manageability in life and their capability to perform daily occupations. {\it Aim:} The aim of this study was to describe and investigate how these concepts of person and occupational performance of 27 daily occupations in terms of ``effort'', ``inconvenience'', ``avoidance'', ``give up'',…``frequency'' and ``satisfaction'' were related to each other. {\it Design:} A prospective correlative study was conducted. {\it Method:} A consecutive series of eighty-four patients with chronic pain completed a structured interview and responded to the self-assessment instruments Sense-of-Coherence Scale (SOC-13) and Capability of Performing Daily Occupations (CPDO). {\it Results:} Weak but significant correlation (p < 0.05 ) were found between the SOC-13 sub-scale ``manageability'' and the specific occupations ``physical exercise / training'' (r = - 0.24 ), ``climb stairs'' (r = - 0.27 ) ``social activity'' (r= - 0.25 ) and ``wash the laundry'' (r = - 0.30 ), as well as between the SOC-13 sub-scale ``meaningfulness'' and the CPDO occupations ``grocery shopping'' (r = -0.22 ), ``performing meals'' (r = - 0.24 ), and ``wash the laundry'' (r = - 0.31 ) and the CPDO question ``frequency of performing occupations'' r = -0.22 ). The participants' mean value (mean = 58) of SOC-13 was below the other populations represented in a literature review. The mean values for CPDO (3.4--4.3) (optimal score is zero) showed that the participants perceived themselves having activity limitations concerning performance of daily occupations, and the performance area of work productive activities were experienced as more disabling. The degree to which the participants perceived themselves having a strong sense of coherence or being disabled by pain varied greatly both for the results of SOC-13 ( range 32--90 points) and CPDO (range 1.1--7.8 points). {\it Conclusion:} The expected significant relationship between a person's sense of coherence and the performance of daily occupations was partly verified with weak significant correlations. In clinical practice the assessment instruments are suggested to be of value in rehabilitation clinics for occupational therapists who work with people with chronic pain.
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Keywords: Activities of Daily Living, coping, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, self-assessment
Abstract: Many similarities can be drawn between the athletic and industrial population. It is time for a shift in the approach toward injured workers utilizing a sports medicine perspective. We must think of workers as industrial athletes and recognize that the sports medicine model can be appropriately adapted to the injured worker. This model includes prevention, early intervention/identification, training and conditioning, and progressive treatment. Sports medicine rehabilitation concepts include treating the entire kinetic…chain that is associated with a specific injury and the SAID principle (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands).
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Keywords: industrial athlete, sports medicine, rehabilitation, SAID
Abstract: This article examines applications of multiple regression in rehabilitation research. The authors address the logic and assumptions of correlational research, annotated with examples from the contemporary rehabilitation and allied health literature. As a means of testing relationships between a set of independent variables and one dependent variable, multiple regression is presented as a flexible and useful data analytic strategy.
Abstract: ``Children are travelers, newly arrived in a country ofwhich they know nothing.'' {\it --John Locke} Street children represent a rapidly growing socio-educational challenge affecting both the developing and industrialized nations of the world. At risk for physical, emotional, social, and cognitive violation, these children are in need of interventions that appropriately address their needs in the context of their environment, and build upon the positive survival skills that they have developed as…a result of street life. This paper explores the causes, and consequences of this growing phenomenon. It seeks to make known the global dimensions of the physical, social, mental and developmental health consequences of street life for the child. It offers possible occupational therapy intervention strategies and opportunities for working with street children which transition them from youth to mainstream adult and citizenship in the world.
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Keywords: street children, human rights violations, health
