Long-term health effects seen in injured youth

Little is known about how workplace injuries in young workers affect their health and work experiences in the long term. Do such injuries have a continuing effect on their vulnerability to injury, symptoms and re-injury? This study investigates these issues, looking at health-care use, beyond workers’ compensation health services or benefits, among youth with a workers’ compensation claim before and after the injury date. It then compares these findings with a sample of non-injured youth.

Researchers analyzed a population-based study that merged health and workers’ compensation records by gender. They looked at 18,903 compensation claims for individuals aged 15-24 in British Columbia between 1991 and 2001 and matched them with a sample of non-injured young workers. Researchers included only short-term disability claims.

Four distinct patterns of health-care use emerged, based on visits to general practitioners. These patterns were based on information from nine years before the injury and nine years after the injury:

Group 1: low number of visits (two per year)
Group 2: medium number of visits (four per year)
Group 3: medium-high number of visits (four to nine per year)
Group 4: high number of visits (10 to 16 per year)

All four groups showed a spike in health-care use in the year following the injury date, with the greatest increase among women. For both men and women, the initial spike was due to a musculoskeletal or injury diagnoses (fractures, sprains, etc). Health-care use remained high for those with musculoskeletal diagnoses even after the injury. In general, women had higher health-care use than men.

This was the first population-based, longitudinal study of general health-care use among youth with a work injury. However, the results are drawn from a selected sample of participants whose health-care use could be tracked over a long time, and may not reflect the experiences of all young workers.