How APMiQ can help your workers make a successful return to work after a workplace injury.
The psychosocial impacts on return to work success are well documented.
From Professor Sir Mansel Aylward’s (2005) view that long-term worklessness has the health risk equivalent to smoking 10 packs of cigarettes a day, to Safe Work Australia’s 2016 Return to Work Survey.
This survey found a higher return to work rate for physically injured workers who perceived their employer responded positively to their workplace injury, than if they perceived a negative response.
The survey showed 87% returned to work with a positive response and 61% returned to work with an employer’s negative response. (Return to work Survey: Safe Work Australia, 2016 & Dr Mary Wyatt).
The research and statistics outline how a medical condition does not occur in isolation, and two individuals with the same medical diagnosis can experience very different trajectories and timeframes to recovery. This incorporates what may be happening in other areas of an individual’s life, their beliefs, experiences, and coping strategies.
APMiQ is a quantitative measurement of an individual’s overall wellbeing, their perceived return to work (return to work) capacity and their emotional health.
APMiQ takes rehabilitation into the digital era, with a psychosocial smart phone app developed by APM, specifically for clients involved in occupational rehabilitation.
Captured at regular, scheduled intervals, APMiQ tracks your client's progress towards their desired health, social and economic (return to work) outcomes.
By providing feedback in real-time, APMiQ can demonstrate the impact of care on your client while with APM.
The tool ensures that barriers to a return to health, work and life are identified and managed as appropriate and as part of the individual’s rehabilitation plan.
How APMiQ works
- Workers complete the relevant questionnaires with their consultant, on an APM smartphone or tablet.
- The results are automatically sent via a secure network to their personal rehabilitation file.
- These results are populated in the next report produced in a graph, with scores updated every three months for easy to track progress.
- This data can also be extracted as part of a group to show trends across regions, customer portfolios and client cohorts against population demographics.
Physical, mental and psychosocial health are measured using standardised and tailored scales.
These include:
- Orebro Musculoskeletal Pain Questionnaire (OMPQ)
- Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS)
- APM’s custom designed Health Impact Questionnaire
APMiQ provides three reports:
- An overall score demonstrating your client's current status.
- Over time, the resulting trend demonstrates the impact of rehabilitation and treatment on your client while under the care of APM.
- A breakdown of the scales contributing to the overall score, and how the client responded to each
APM Health Impact Questionnaire
Developed as a point in time measurement of emotional health and perception of capacity to return to work.
It has been based on the knowledge that a lack of a work can lead to longer term mental health issues, and poorer return to work results can arise from personal beliefs, misconceptions, social position and poor understanding.
It looks at the health of the client from three angles:
- Person (thoughts, feelings and behaviours)
- Workplace (work and health concerns)
- Context (relevant people, systems and processes)