Predictors of work participation for Māori 3 months after injury

ABSTRACT

An important rehabilitation outcome for injured Māori is a timely sustainable return to work. This article identifies the factors influencing working after injury in an attempt to reduce the individual, social, and economic costs. Māori participants in the Prospective Outcomes of Injury Study were interviewed about preinjury and injury-related factors. Among Māori participants, 521 were working for pay prior to injury; 64% were working 3 months postinjury. Factors identified, using modified Poisson regression, that predicted working include financial security (aRR = 1.34, 95% CI [1.12, 1.61]), an injury of low (aRR = 1.76, 95% CI [1.26, 2.44]) or moderate severity (aRR = 1.86, 95% CI [1.34, 2.59]), professional occupations (aRR = 1.22, 95% CI [1.03, 1.44]), and jobs with less repetitive hand movement (aRR = 1.17, 95% CI [1.01, 1.34]). These factors identified warrant attention when planning interventions to enable rehabilitation back to the workplace.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous
• injury
• Māori
• return to work
• work participation

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the study participants for sharing their information and to the study interviewers for their role in data collection. The authors thank Accident Compensation Corporation New Zealand (ACC) staff members for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Declaration of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (2007–2013; Grant number HRC 10/052) and was co-funded by the Accident Compensation Corporation New Zealand (2007–2010).