| Low back complaints is the most frequent and expensive disease in Western society. 93% of the costs incurred in the Netherlands is caused by sickness absence and inability to work. In this project a practical sick absence prediction instrument is being developed by and for company medical officers / occupational health professionals in order to be able to calculate in individual cases the risk of long-term absence resulting from low back complaints and to give a tailored intervention advice. Use is made of a database of 628 cases with absence due to aspecific low back complaints which have been consulted by over 200 company doctors of a large number of Health and Safety Executives and have been collected in 4 recent PhD studies in a comparable way. The absence prediction instrument is an aid to stimulate effectively acting in sick absence counselling on the basis of scientific evidence. Moreover it will be possible to provide a better basis for interventions to employee and employer. The development of the instrument will be done by Body@Work TNO VUmc in collaboration with health and safety professionals who participate in the Laboretum. This warrants a structural collaboration and enhancement of the relationship between science and practice. Subsequently the instrument will be tested on utility in practice in a pilot study and adapted where appropriate. Finally it will be distributed through the website (Laboretum, Body@Work). The development of this absence prediction instrument for back complaints may serve as a blueprint for other diseases. |
