Financial and recovery worry one year after traumatic injury: A prognostic, registry-based cohort study
Section snippets
Background
The consequences of traumatic injury are frequently complex. Several stressors affect life post-injury, and may bring about intrusive worry, especially in those who experience difficult ‘non-recovery’ trajectories, with persistent disability, chronic pain and/or secondary psychological health conditions [[1], [2], [3]]. While the majority of injured persons do recover and return to work and regular activities soon after injury, a significant minority report poorer quality of life and greater
Participant recruitment
Participants were recruited from the Victorian Orthopaedic Trauma Outcomes Registry (VOTOR) and Victorian State Trauma Registry (VSTR) between October 2012 and October 2014. These registries monitor orthopaedic and major trauma cases in Victoria, Australia, and have been described in detail elsewhere [[34], [35]]. Participants were eligible if they were proficient in spoken or written English and aged 18–75, and were excluded if they had cognitive impairment, assessed qualitatively during
Trauma cohort overview
A total of 732 individuals expressed interest in participating in the study between October 2013 and December 2014, of whom 429 patients aged 17 to 75 (M = 45, SD = 14) participated and gave consent for the extraction of compensation claim data. A total of 70 potential participants could not be contacted, 12 were ineligible, 221 declined to participate or dropped out after providing consent, and two had died after expressing interest in the study but before completing the questionnaires, giving
Discussion
Worry is experienced by all of us at some point in our lives [23], and is a common response to stressful life events [30]. This is the first study to explore the levels of worry experienced about financial matters, recovery and pain in a trauma cohort. The study showed that around half of persons who experienced a traumatic injury report being worried about their finances and recovery at 12 months post-injury. The key predictors of financial worry were lower level of education, discharge to
Conclusion
In conclusion, the present study found that worry about financial matters and recovery is associated with having a more serious injury, and experiencing persistent pain, poor physical health and high psychological distress. Moreover, several demographic (i.e., age and education), injury (multi-trauma, hospital stay, discharge to rehabilitation, external attribution of fault) and compensation factors (high health service use, treatment for pain and mental health, and negative compensation system
Conflicts of Interest
All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant (LP120200033) in collaboration with the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), and a Platform Access Grant from Monash University. MJG was supported by a National Health & Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) Early Career Fellowship (APP1036124) and Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE170100726) and PC by a NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship (APP545926). The VSTR is a Department
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