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Can a Leaning Health Care System Improve Outcomes for Injured Frontline Workers?

Tracks
Ballroom 1 and Virtual via OnAIR
Monday, March 4, 2024
12:10 PM - 12:30 PM
Ballroom 1

Overview

Professor Zachary Steel, UNSW & St John of God Health Care


Speaker

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Professor Zachary Steel
St John of God Chair of Trauma and Mental Health
UNSW & St John of God Health Care

Can a Leaning Health Care System Improve Outcomes for Injured Frontline Workers?

Abstract

Australians who have served as First Responders, Defence workers, or in frontline high-risk roles are at increased risk of workplace injury. Psychological Injury represents a major challenge with claims between 3 to 5 times higher in these industries and an average injury claim lasting close to 12 months, substantially longer than the 13-week average in other industries. There may be some capacity to reduce the frequency of these injuries by improving workplace practices, however, risk to these injuries is in large part a direct result of the cumulative impact of trauma exposure which is endemic to these occupations. In the absence of processes to prevent injury for frontline workers there is a critical need to improve the effectiveness of injury recovery processes. Current evidence suggests that the majority of injured frontline workers have negative post injury experiences with workers compensation processes with partial or ineffective treatment for their injuries. Injury recovery is a complex process influenced by actions of organisations and individuals at multiple levels across the workers compensation and health care system. Recovery from psychological injury is best viewed within a rehabilitation framework where functional outcomes will be maximised by a sustained clinical program that builds on the outcomes of earlier treatments. Our own experience and national data indicated that while clinical gain from a targeted treatment program is evident there is substantial variability in treatment responses with the majority of workers continue to have substantial impairment. We have been attempting to build a learning health system that can be responsive to individual clinical needs I will present the findings from an initial attempt to build a learning health care system where we introduced a multimodal assessment program to develop a modular care pathway that linked injured first responders and veterans to a range of care pathways.

Biography

Professor Zachary Steel holds the St John of God Chair of Trauma and Mental Health, a partnership between Richmond and Burwood Hospital in NSW and the Discipline of Psychiatry & Mental Health at University of New South Wales. He has more than 30 years’ experience as a researcher and clinician with a focus on the impact of trauma on veterans, first responders, frontline workers, refugees, asylum seekers, and civilian populations. He is also the immediate past president of the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (2019-2021) and is on the Board for the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS).

Host

Mel Stewart
Director
AST Management


Moderator

Shinade Hartman
AST Management

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Justine White
Event Manager
AST Management


Session Chair

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Sadhbh Joyce
Principal Psychologist / Co-Founder
Mindarma and The Black Dog Institute

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