Work Related: Personal Stories of Reporting Workplace Injuries

In 2010, the Duke Graduate Medical Education Innovation Fund provided seed funding to pilot Documenting Medicine, which pairs Duke physician residents and fellows with documentarians at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies to produce documentary work exploring medical issues. As an Occupational Medicine resident, I wanted to develop a project that explored the personal stories of aging and health among physical laborers.

For my project, I decided to begin by interviewing and photographing the work experience of my father, who has worked as a coal miner in West Virginia for over 40 years. During the course of my project, my father suffered a work-related knee injury. His story of navigating the Worker's Compensation system and of the difficulties in reporting injuries is compelling. The focus of my work has narrowed around the barriers to reporting injuries.

There is much stigma associated with disability and the Worker's Compensation system. Many clinicians and employers assume that over-reporting of injuries is common; however, prior research has demonstrated that in some industries, under-reporting of work-related injuries is a problem. Specific safety practices, such as incentive programs, appear to promote under-reporting of injuries. Multiple other disincentives to the reporting of work-related injuries exist, including cultural and financial disincentives.

This multi-media project incorporates photography both at the work-site (small coal-mine in southern West Virginia) and within the health-care system. Both photography and oral interview are used to explore a part of the patient history that is often left in the dark- the unreported injury, and the patient's experience of navigating the complexity of care under Worker's Compensation.