UK Faculty of Occupational Medicine: Guidance for healthcare professionals on return to work for patients with long-COVID, 2021

Moved from this thread
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https://www.fom.ac.uk/media-events/publications/fom-guidance Just found but I haven't read it yet. However, Dr Ira Madan has 'FORM' not 'FOM' on ME claiming to be a bit of an authority...(2006 precursor NHS Health & Work Guidance on ME to PACE and NICE 2007!).....

Guidance for healthcare professionals on return to work for patients with long-COVID


On behalf of the FOM, a multidisciplinary group under the leadership of FOM Academic Dean, Dr Ira Madan, developed guidance aimed at all healthcare professionals to assist them in facilitating the return to work of people who are unable to work due to long-COVID. This guidance was developed alongside the NICE/RCGP/SIGN.

Access the guidance here (for the full-sized file, for best use for printing the guidance) or here (for the smaller sized version, designed for sharing digitally).


Guidance for managers and employers on return to work for employees with long-COVID
This guidance is aimed at managers and employers to assist them in facilitating the return to work of employees who may find this difficult because of long-COVID. Access this guidance here (for the full-sized file, for best use for printing the guidance) or here (for the smaller sized version, designed for sharing digitally).

 

General Occupational Health Principle - otherwise known as stating the bl**ding obvious......

One of the points -
"Worklessness is associated with poor physical and mental health and increased risk of self harm."

love the way that's put to imply that being workless is the driver here rather than poor mental or physical health being the driver for being unable to.work and therefore workless.

"Return to work is an effective part of any rehabilitation from.many illnesses and is important to patients."

I have seen this precise argument used to try to force an ME patient who was housebound back into the workplace. The argument went along the lines of as there is no apparent cause of symptoms and no proof that exertion can cause harm the person should commence a phased return to work. When they tried to argue that their symptoms.were to severe to enable them to be up, dressed and ready to leave the house most days the attitude was they'd just have to learn to live with their symptoms!

 

Under work and health -

"Give reassurance that an increase of symptoms on return to work is unlikely to mean harm in most people"

Sigh.

I really hope this catches up with the likes of Madan one day - especially if she's claiming any expertise on ME.

 

Unlikely.... sigh again!

Consultant profiles
Contacts
PA: Farhan Quadri
PA email: farhan.quadri@gstt.nhs.uk

Area of expertise: work related disorders and diseases.

• Biography
  • chief medical adviser to Houses of Parliament 1999-present
  • reader in occupational health, King’s College London.

 

>Where we were unable to find any evidence to the contrary, we have given guidance based on general occupational health return to work principles.

Well, this probably made their job really simple, considering that we're operating in a very evidence-deprived environment, with all the LC management papers so far accomplishing nothing but proprosing a grab-bag of "multidisciplinary and personalized" management options, extrapolated from other conditions. Luckily, the UK is making great strides in funding research into new management options, which seems a little ass-backwards without clarifying pathophysiology first, to know what you're even dealing with, but what would I know?

 

"Give reassurance that an increase in symptoms on return to work is unlikely to mean harm in most people"

ah yes the old 'patient reassured' bit;

https://www.s4me.info/threads/a-met...020-pilkington-et-al.16961/page-2#post-334303

 

Not likely as she is at Kings, (as is Hoptof and SW...) this is a 2018 publication....


https://kcl-mrcdtp.com/wp-content/u...Theme-2-Project-Catalogue-201920-updated2.pdf

2822.2 Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, occupation and mental health; what enables people with CFS to re-join the work force?

Co-Supervisor 1A: Professor Nicola Fear Research School/Division or CAG: Academic PsychiatryE-mail: Nicola.t.fear@kcl.ac.ukWebsite: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/nicola.t.fear.html
Co-Supervisor 1B: Professor Sir Simon WesselyResearch School/Division or CAG: Academic Psychiatry Email: simon.wessely@kcl.ac.ukWebsite: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/simon.wessely.html

Project description:

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is characterised by feeling extremely tired and generally unwell and affects over 250,000 people. Only 5-30% of people appear to fully recover. People with CFS find it difficult to carry out everyday tasks and activities. Still, little is known about how this impacts their ability to work, and more importantly, what predicts return to work if their symptoms subside and how we can support people with CFS to stay in employment during the early course of their illness.
Your PhD will focus on addressing these questions, and aims, in the long term, to contribute to the quality of life of those affected by CFS.

Further, we anticipate that your PhD will inform the development and implementation of employment support programs. We envisage the successful PhD student to work closely with experts by experience and other stakeholders in this important field of study. You will use readily available large quantitative datasets in combination with qualitative interviews with CFS patients (conducted by the student).
Training opportunities will be provided, mostly by King’s, to develop your quantitative and qualitative research methods skills.
Budget will be made available for external courses.

Year 1:
•Conduct a literature review on occupational outcomes in CFS patients
•Set up a stakeholder advisory group including an expert by experience
•Conduct data cleaning
•Start quantitative data analyses

Year 2:
•Submit systematic review for publication
•Conduct, transcribe and start analysing the qualitative interviews
•Finalise quantitative data analyses

Year 3:
•Finalise qualitative analyses
•PhD write up
•Prepare manuscripts for publication
•Present at stakeholder event and (inter)national conferences29Two representative publications from supervisors:Thandi G, Fear NT,Chalder T.

A comparison of the Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) across different patient populations using Rasch analysis and exploratory factor analysis (2017).

Journal of Psychosomatic Research
92.Holgate ST, Komaroff AL, Magan D, Wessely S. Chronic fatigue syndrome: understanding a complex illness
2011. Nature reviews neuroscience

 

I think one day it will bite them all on the ass. This is one of the reasons they play so dirty. They know one day their emperor's new clothes will be seen for what they are & they know just how bad the fall out will be. So they will do anything to make sure it doesn't happen in their lifetimes.

The system allowing, if not encouraging, such cosiness between medicine and finance means that people like these can't backtrack and state that an hypothesis that might have been worthy of exploration 30+ years ago should have been easily disproved back then and "mistakes" were made...lessons learned. Instead they'll risk bringing a whole field of medicine into disrepute.

In the meantime, while the DWP and insurance industry are well represented by the state sanctioned propaganda, who is looking out for the patient's best interests? Our situation is often the equivalent of going to court, you think your lawyer is representing your best interests but, on the day, you discover they really work for the other side.

Of course handing out of gongs & allowing these wealthy folk to continue interfering well passed retirement age slows progress down too. Without clearing out the dead wood new researchers with fresh, untainted eyes have to find a way to survive under the watchful gaze of the old guard.

 

Cosy cabal n'est pas?

Alistair Miller - Military connection
SW Gulf War Military of 'Deference' Connection .......

https://www.mrc.soton.ac.uk/cmhw/professor-nicola-fear/

Professor Nicola Fear

Nicola joined the Academic Department of Military Mental Health at King’s College London (KCL) in 2004 having trained as an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and University of Oxford.

Nicola has also worked as an epidemiologist within the UK Ministry of Defence.

Since 2011, Nicola has been Director of the King’s Centre of Military Health Research (KCMHR) alongside Professor Sir Simon Wessely. In 2014, Nicola was awarded a Chair in Epidemiology.

Nicola is the lead epidemiologist on the KCMHR military cohort study and leads several studies examining the impact of military service on families