As you may or may not already know, my daily routine as an Exercise Physiologist will often consist of travelling out to meet people from all walks of life living in the suburbs of the Sydney Metropolitan Area.

These amazing people who I am lucky enough to meet, all suffer from workplace injury and all have their very own unique story.

My goal is to improve their quality of life and assist them to return to work by providing them with exercise physiology based treatment.

Now one of the most frustrating things for an Exercise Physiologist when prescribing work related activity is the amount of time that will go by from the date that the person injures themselves, up until when we actually get to be involved in their injury rehabilitation. By definition, work related activity is supposed to be a way of promoting activity and recovery in workers with soft tissue injuries.

In fact, WorkCover NSW recommends in The Soft Tissue Injury Guidelines, that work related activity programs should be a progression of treatment during the sub acute period (usually 4-12 weeks post injury), particularly when a soft tissue injury continues beyond the expected recovery time and / or pyschosocial risk factors are identified.

Despite these recommendations, only 17% of the referrals made for Exercise Physiology based treatment programs occur prior to six months post injury.

In my experience, the amount of time taken to refer will vary from case to case. The earliest that I have been involved is around 6 weeks post injury and it’s safe to say that those who I’ve seen that early on have made fantastic recoveries. However the oldest injury that I have been involved with was 12 years post injury and I must say that this presented numerous barriers, both physically and psychosocially.

Although we experience delays in being able to provide treatment to our patients, blame cannot be laid directly at the injured worker’s case manager or nominated treating doctor. The majority of the time, both of these parties have the best interest of the injured worker at heart. It is simply unfortunate that chaotic workloads and suboptimal understandings of work related activity still exists. We need to bridge this gap by educating others of the importance that work related activity has in the recovery of those with soft tissue injuries.

The simple truth is that the longer it is before we are able to provide the appropriate treatment that our patients need, the more difficult it will become for Exercise Physiologists like myself to help them achieve the successful outcome that they deserve.

And that is simply to lead a life of quality...