Journal of occupational rehabilitation
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Successful management of workers on sick leave due to low back pain by the general physician and physiotherapist depends on reliable prognostic information on the course of low back pain and work resumption. ⋯ Knowledge of the predictive value of these indicators by physicians and physiotherapists will help to identify subgroups of patients and will thus enhance clinical decision-making.
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Every year many workers are excluded from work because of a work disability attributable to a musculoskeletal disorder (MSD). Factors associated with the development and persistence of the work disability can be related to the worker, work environment, compensation policies, healthcare system and insurance system. Workers' understanding/representations of their disability are associated with coping behaviors aimed at helping them adapt to or solve their health problem. A representation is a complex, organized entity incorporating thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes regarding a particular subject. Representations have been studied in anthropology, sociology and psychology since the 1960s, but often in a compartmentalized way. These representations provide an important key to understanding what motivates workers during rehabilitation and the return-to-work process. To build upon disciplinary knowledge and better understand workers' efforts to cope with their persistent disability, this article therefore aims to pool the different knowledge available on the illness representation concept, from the fields of anthropology, sociology and psychology in order to gain a better understanding of its application in the MSD context. ⋯ Bridging the gap between these disciplines will help us achieve a new level of knowledge that will, by taking social interactions into account, enhance understanding of workers' representations, and the behaviors they adopt to manage their MSD-related disability.