Towards Worker/Patient Empowerment in Occupational Medicine Practice: Defining, Measuring, and Facilitating

This presentation describes a project of a publicly funded occupational health clinical center (OHCC) that has attempted to develop a worker/patient empowerment approach to the clinical care of injured workers. The project stems from a theoretical framework that recognizes that while worker/patients come to the clinic with problems that seem individual in nature, the causes can be found in their social context. Consequently, effective ‘treatment' for these problems requires identifying their causes and making change at several possible levels including the individual, the workplace and the policy/regulatory arena. ‘Treatment' in this sense requires the worker/patient have the power to contribute to change.

The OHCC's challenge has been to take this theoretical insight and apply it to patient care. Activities undertaken toward this end include:

1) Defining the meaning of empowerment in this context

2) Developing ways to measure empowerment

3) Developing a clinical practice that encourages and facilitates worker/patient empowerment

4) Identification of barriers to this process

The presentation will discuss how the OHCC has sought to address each of these issues. The focus will be on the OHCC's case study approach in which staff closely analyzed a series of patient cases to both define and assess the level of empowerment. Changes to the OHCC's clinical practice based on this analysis will be described. Efforts to evaluate the evolving practice will also be discussed.

Implementation of a worker/patient empowerment approach creates the possibility of more effective treatment and prevention of occupational disease and injury.