Let’s bring job seeking into the 21st Century

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If you boil down all the different ways we can help our clients as Rehab and Return to Work Professionals, it comes down to one ultimate goal: help that person get back to work. Receiving a referral for job seeking support (i.e. help this client secure a new job) is commonplace. In fact, it's one of the core competencies that we, as rehabilitation counsellors, are required to develop as part of our profession. So if job seeking and placement is one of the core tenets of the rehab process, … [Read more...]

Adversarial Rehabilitation. Does it have to be this way?

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In preparing to meet my brand new client, I had read through all of the documentation that the insurer had sent me; I was clear on their brief – help this man get back to work in a new job. I understood, from paper what his illness experience has been to date, and had some idea of what his skills for new employment might look like. He was pleasant to speak to on the phone; he appeared motivated and interested in meeting with me and asked what he could bring. Of course, I suggested he bring a … [Read more...]

Dear Rehabilitation Client…

Dear Rehabilitation Client,  I know you're unsure, I know you're uncertain and probably somewhat skeptical of what rehabilitation can offer you. After all, it wasn't that long ago that you were in control of your entire life, and were making decisions about going to work, looking after your family, participating in sport, playing music, looking after your kids, spending time with your friends and going on holidays. And then, suddenly, some health event has rendered you unable to make … [Read more...]

The Health Benefits of Work in Action: A Case Study

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Continuing on from my post last week about the barriers to making the health benefits of work a reality, I wanted to explore what happens for our clients whenit is a reality. One of the unfortunate side effects of providing rehabilitation for our clients is that normally we're asked to cease our involvement after a person returns to work. This means that we rarely get to see the positive effect that being back at work can have on a person's life. However myself and my team are lucky enough … [Read more...]

Making The Health Benefits of Work a Reality

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So... we've all heard a lot about the health benefits of work in recently, haven't we? As Rehabilitation Professionals, this isn't new information to us. We're all about helping our clients utilise good work as a tool to improved function and recovery. But... we all know that the "health benefits of work" isn't exactly an easy thing to implement. It does require a big change to get everyone on board with this new mindset and to actually implement it in a meaningful way that results in … [Read more...]

What’s The Deal with Chronic Pain?

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Guest post by Natalie Taylor, Rehabilitation Counsellor at Purple Co. So here's a can of worms: what's happening for a person with chronic pain? I had the opportunity to attend a chronic pain recovery workshop this weekend at NeurRa (Neuroscience Australia) facilitated by Prof. Kevin Vowles. For most of his career, Dr Vowles has been researching  how we can help people with chronic pain get their lives back. There was one fundamental truth that kept presenting itself to me over the … [Read more...]

Why Medical Opinion is King

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A reflective post from me today. I've been talking on the Purple Co blog recently about what it means when we try to pursue a medical certification of "fitness" for our clients - and how this determination can affect outcomes. Today I wanted to discuss the fact that the pendulum swings both ways. In terms of claims management, medical opinion is king. And often, the same is true for our clients. The disconnect occurs when medical opinion stops being able to present solutions to help … [Read more...]

Why Medical Certification of Capacity Rarely Leads to Change

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In last week's post I wrote about how uncertainty around change (and an absence of planning for change) makes many of our clients feel stuck. Stuck in their injury, illness or disability and worried that this is how it's always going to be. I want to explore how we still chase down medical certification as a way of bringing about change and helping our clients improve their function. Do you ever wonder why it rarely works? Why do many of our clients with a certified capacity for work … [Read more...]

Why Flare-Up Management is Crucial for Good Rehab

In my series of posts on the evolution of rehab, I explored how various approaches lead to very different outcomes for our clients. In particular, in my 20 years' experience, prescriptive rehab that focuses on very rapid outcomes tends to have higher rates of recidivism. Obviously, this is no good for anyone involved. Poor flare-up management is at the core of this problem. The illnesses that our clients present with are now more chronic in nature, often with a natural pattern of … [Read more...]

Check Your Attitude!

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I wrote last time about how important it is to check in with our clients about their attitudes - about their illness or injury, the idea of recovery and one day returning to work. But what about our attitudes? There has been a lot of interest lately in how the attitudes of treating professionals impact on their patients' outcomes. In some ways, a health professional's expectations and beliefs about a client can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. How we convey our beliefs about our … [Read more...]




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