Thank you Dr Swift!

 

 

We have the same approach as Warner. Functional early return to work is associated with so many good outcomes – faster recovery, better job satisfaction, lower cost, to name a few. We have an early return to work program and policy that requires supervisors find transitional duty in their department, and we have a nurse who facilitates creative solutions when there’s not obvious transitional duty. We also use our ergonomic nurse to find creative solutions. Now that the policy is part of the culture, it is almost unheard of to have a nurse on work restrictions who can’t contribute in a meaningful way during their recovery.

 

Same as Warner, we don’t require passing a lift test, but leave the determination of work restrictions to the treating provider. We have a lift box and dynamometer also for our clinicians to use as needed.

 

 

 

We allow anyone injured to return to work within their restrictions if transitional duty is available, in fact we strongly encourage it and help find people work outside of their department. A good example is that many of our nurse vaccinators at the flu season mass events are nurses on modified duty (we gave >15,000 flu vaccine in about 3 weeks).   We generally do not do a functional left test but the providers who set restrictions may use in clinic weighted boxes to help set or refine lifting limits when indicate and they are not sure at what poundage to set restriction and providers also sometimes use push/pull dynamometers to set restrictions.

Warner

 

 

 

We have a hospital policy that states an RN on modified duty cannot return to his/her unit until he/she is released to Full Duty and has passed a Lift Test.   I am interested in #1 whether other health care systems have experience with allowing those injured nurses to be able to return to their own units as long as they are able to work within their accommodations and #2 do other healthcare systems utilize a Lift Test or other functional job evaluation before allowing the injured employee back to Full Duty?

 

Thanks, I have enjoyed following the interchange of information on this Occ Med network.

 

Randall S. Fowler, MD

Medical Director 

Portneuf Medical Center

Employee Health & WorkMed

500 S. 11^th  Suite 500

Pocatello, Idaho 83201

208-239-1940 clinic / 208-239-4506 fax

Randall.Fowler@portmed.org

 

 

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