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Return to work after an acute cardiac event |
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Investigators: In Australia each year, a significant number of people suffer heart attacks or undergo coronary bypass surgery or coronary angioplasty. Despite good medical and surgical outcomes, however, many patients do not resume work after the acute phase of their illness. Often the reasons for failure to return to work are psychological. Patients fear that work might cause stress and further heart problems. Doctors sometimes encourage excessive caution which increases patients' fears about the dangers of work. Further, employers are often reluctant to allow former employees to resume work after a cardiac illness in case further symptoms or deaths occur at work. In the western suburbs where there is high unemployment and a greater number of people with limited education or a non-English speaking background, re-employment is often more difficult, especially for patients who have manual jobs. This two-year project aims to examine more systematically the rates of return to work among patients admitted to the Western Hospital and investigate factors associated with failure to resume work. The project explores, via interviews and focus groups, perceptions concerning return to work after heart attack, heart surgery or coronary angioplasty of patients, doctors and employers in the region. Interviews are conducted with patients soon after admission to hospital and again at 4 and 12 months to investigate attitudes to return to work and intentions to resume work, and to find out at follow-up whether they resumed work and the nature of any changes or problems they experienced. Medical characteristics of patients are being documented and perceived barriers to return to work studied. Strategies to facilitate resumption of work will be explored. Doctors, other health professionals and employers are asked similar questions to find out their views concerning patients' failure to resume work and to seek suggestions for interventions to improve occupational outcomes. Information gathered from this project will be used to design and test programs to achieve higher rates of work return in the region. These programs will draw both on the experiences of others who have implemented successful interventions elsewhere and on the material gathered in this project. If interventions are found to be effective, recommendations will be made for their integration into standard cardiac rehabilitation programs. |
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