Factors Affecting Injured Workers' Return to Work: Focusing on the Effectiveness of Vocational Rehabilitation Services

Objective: To investigate factors that affect the injured workers' return to work and determine the difference in influence depending on whether vocational rehabilitation was provided. Methods: This study used three years of data collected from the Panel Study of Workers’ Compensation Insurance. Among the 3,294 injured workers who completed medical treatment between January and December 2017, 1,816 were included after excluding those with more than one year of medical care, severe disabilities (grades 1-3), or no disabilities. The independent variables were grouped into personal, functional, and environmental factors based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health framework. Binary logistic regression was performed to assess the effect of vocational rehabilitation on returning to work. Results: Vocational rehabilitation reduced the negative impact of factors such as female sex, single status, older age, high disability grade, frequent pain, low self-efficacy, long medical treatment period, short working period, poor relationship with employment, and small company size, while increasing the influence of positive factors such as improved work capacity. Conclusion: This study showed that the influence of negative factors decreased and that of positive factors increased in the vocational rehabilitation group. The effectiveness of vocational rehabilitation was confirmed by differences in the impact of personal, functional, and environmental factors.