RTW Matters attended the 10th Annual National Workers Compensation Summit in Melbourne last week. Over the coming weeks we’ll bring you articles based on some of the topics raised during the Summit’s two days of presentations – vicarious trauma, unions and workers’ compensation harmonisation, stress interventions and occupational physicians in the RTW process, to name a few – and we’ll be bringing you interviews with some of the presenters themselves.

A plethora of interesting topics and issues were raised at the Summit, and we’ll be keen to pass these on to you and hear your views.

Here’s a taste of things to come:

“If we move to a national system, workers must have a say in that system…the highest standard in any state jurisdiction is the lowest standard that we will accept.” – Jarrod Moran, ACTU national compensation officer and self-proclaimed “workers’ comp junkie”, on the harmonisation of Australia’s workers’ compensation systems.

“Trauma can cause you to change your frame of reference, which changes as a result of the experiences that we come into contact with. After eight hours a day of hearing about vicious assaults you might conclude that the world you live in is not so safe.” – Jackie Burke, Counselling Coordinator at the NSW Rape Crisis Centre on the effect “vicarious trauma” can have on those working around traumatic events.

“Job stress is a mismatch between demands of the job and what is required to do it…It’s a result of the combination of things people bring to work as well as what work brings to people.” – Anthony D LaMontagne, who is conducting a study in conjunction with beyondblue, which addresses job stress and appropriate approaches from within the workplace.

“Managers can make or break a rehabilitation program.” – Rosie Mallon, injury management manager from the Endeavor Foundation (QLD), who reduced the average return to work time at her workplace from 45 days to 10 days.

“The best thing to do if you’ve got back pain is not go to the doctor. People think doctors can fix all these problems, but many of them they can’t. The value of medical examination for back pain is very limited – it’s not usually diagnostically useful.” – David Allen, senior occupational and environmental physician, on the misleading nature of the label back “abnormalities” and the benefits of patients with common back or shoulder pains being treated conservatively.

Watch this space!