Background
Methods
Stakeholder Advisory Committee
Sample
Data Collection—Interviews
Analyses
Results
Participant Characteristics
Characteristic | Percent of sample (%) |
---|---|
Gender | |
Male | 53 |
Female | 45 |
Age range | |
18–34 | 12 |
35–44 | 35 |
45–54 | 37 |
55 and above | 16 |
Role | |
RTW personnel | 41 |
Worker | 59 |
Member type | |
Sworn | 61 |
Civilian | 39 |
Worker injury type | |
Physical | 18 |
Psychological | 33 |
Combination | 49 |
Overarching Themes
Theme | Subtheme | Quote |
---|---|---|
Context | “We understand that PTSD is a very difficult and tragic injury caused to individuals, especially police officers, but our position is [that] we as an organization are responsible to the community, to the taxpayer. We need regular updates on what the injury status is on that individual and what prognosis, if any, is in play… We need to make decisions… for public safety and the community.” (RTW personnel E005) | |
Complexity of injury | “I’ve had a physical and a mental health [injury]. Unfortunately, the policies are all based around a physical injury. I found that being off on a physical injury, those policies made sense, but when I was off on a mental health-related injury, those policies really didn’t work that well. It felt like I was trying to fit a mental health issue into a physical issue. That’s where I feel my employer has fallen short. They really haven’t looked at return to work policies or being off on mental health issues… My time off on my psychological one was way harder just trying to deal with paperwork and all that stuff.” (Worker W025) | |
Complexity of injury | “The process is very similar. The only thing that I do between the claims is physical injuries, typically, have a standard recovery timeline, you know, you break an arm it’s six weeks. You have different injuries, there’s a target date to when you would recover. With psychological claims there aren’t very many general recovery timelines, and one person may recover differently than another person, like the same injury. So, it’s kind of a work in progress. We leave a lot of room in between for modification and for altering things.” RTW personnel E007) | |
Culture | “You got to know very quickly what the hierarchy is. You have civilian females at the very bottom, male civilians above you, female officers, and male officers. That’s the hierarchy, and you are definitely treated differently, I’m not saying by every single person…30 years ago so it was a different mentality. But there are a lot of people who are just against, first of all, females in policing in any way, but then the civilians.” (Worker 011) | |
Stoicism | “It’s funny, the week before I actually went off and sought the treatment and got sick, there was a senior officer […] I was in a meeting with him where he basically was slamming or talking negatively about people that go off for mental health reasons. And at that point I just thought, I was sick, I was like, ‘oh, there’s no way I can go off now.’ Because he was talking about people that we work with, people that we knew that were off getting help. So, that kind of stigma. And he’s a person that I genuinely like, I respect, I think the world of him. But in that case, he was very judgmental.” (Worker 004) | |
Stigma | “In my role, I have lots of meetings with senior management. And in the past, before I went off work the first time… they have a whiteboard down at their end of the hallway in their offices with all the people who are off sick, on [injury leave] or other illnesses. And they call that board the broken toys. Those are the broken toy people. And they talk about what they’re going to do with them, how they’re going to get them back to count paper clips, and things like this. So, I’ve heard a lot of these comments many, many, many times over the years. So, when I went back, that’s what I felt like. That I was being looked at like I was a broken toy.” (Worker 013) | |
Stigma | “Oh, there just is [stigma] with mental health, definitely. Hindsight is 20/20, but go off with a shoulder injury, and people are always like, hey, how is your shoulder? Go off with a mental health injury, and people don’t talk to you, or don’t check in because they don’t know what to say, or they … you know what I mean? There’s a complete difference between the two of them.” (Worker 022) | |
Accommodation | Recovery from injury | “The goal has got to be to get better. Number one, get better, number two, get back to work, I guess makes more sense. But I didn’t want to be off. And when I first talked to my doctor and he said to be off, I’m like, okay cool, so I’ll be back by summer. And he just laughed, no man, just relax. You’ll be back when you’re back. … Because I was doing therapy once or twice a week, I did everything. I maxed out my benefits. I did massage, I did hot yoga, I was doing acupuncture, I was trying everything and everything. Seeing a naturopath. Trying to get better, it was exhausting.” (Worker 004) |
Recovery from injury | “I was anxious to go back. It was me pushing to go back. I just wanted my life to be normal again. I missed work. I missed my co-workers. And, of course, you’re worried, out of sight, out of mind. Things are always changing at work. Policing is ever evolving. And you don’t really want to be out of the loop for too long because the longer you’re gone, the harder it is to get back because you’re already missing a lot of information and everything else. It was me who started that process.” (Worker 014) | |
Challenges of accommodation (availability) | “We’re not a large Police Service…we try our best to put people in positions where they’re going to be most useful and get them back to work as soon as possible. But [we don’t] have countless desk positions. We have the units that we have for police officers, several units, but not to the level of some of the large Services that they can easily be brought back anywhere. We have to kind of figure that out each time what would be best based on their injury.” (RTW personnel E005) | |
Challenges of accommodation (meaningful work) | “Workers’ comp, they wanted me to come back and start working four-hour shifts. The job I left before I was working 15-h shifts. Like four hours you basically put your boots on and you’re taking them off to go home. Then they’re like, oh, maybe you should do some gradual work in the office. No, I don’t want to do work in the office, that’s not my job.” (Worker 020) | |
Communication | Genuine and timely communication | “It was just an absolute mess. I just remember thinking, this is where I am as an employee, I’m a flowchart… It was like, are you kidding me, she couldn’t even have a conversation with me. It’s like as soon as you go off, they don’t even want to touch you. That’s how it felt.” (Worker 012) |
Genuine and timely communication | “We recently talked to [unit X] reminding them that those people shouldn’t be forgotten. We do have people that are off work with post-traumatic stress for lengthy periods. And sometimes it’s just a physical injury. And very, very often we hear back from those members that say, no one from my shift called me and my boss didn’t call me. No one’s calling me, you’re the only [person] that speaks to us. And there is no policy, but there should be policy about regular contact, I think.” (RTW personnel E010) | |
Clarity and consistency of process | “Prior to my unit existing, one of the major complaints was that nobody from the service ever kept in touch with them, that they felt lost, there was no communication, and there was no check-ins. They just didn’t feel that they were appreciated when they were off work. They felt abandoned. For the people that I know of that are off work and I check in on, I don’t have a set timeline or a flag or anything, but some are every two weeks, some are once a month, some are longer than that, some are shorter than that depending on the situation and where they are in their recovery.” (RTW personnel E001) | |
Trust-building | Lack of confidentiality | “Because here, if you know anything about police services, nothing is secret, and everybody tells everybody everything, even though it’s private. There are privacy laws, blah, blah, blah, but everybody knows everything.” (Worker 012) |
Lack of confidentiality | “Sometimes you’ll hear chatter. Oh, yeah, they’re coming back for 22 days to get benefits and then they’ll be off again and that kind of thing. If I hear that, I would usually mention it and I would just say, listen, they’re coming back, whether they’re here 22 days or 23 days or six months, they’re coming back, so don’t be saying stuff like that to them and don’t be making this not a good place for them to be because that’s not good.” (RTW personnel E014) | |
Perceived malingering | “My [coworkers] kept talking about how they kept seeing me in the gym, I looked good, again, [but] I’m just using the system. And I have to be in the gym strengthening muscles, so I didn’t have a choice, I had to go to the gym. And I hated to see my co-workers at the gym because I knew that’s the impression they had of me, so it was very difficult to try and put blinders on and focus on the job I had to do. It was very discouraging being off, especially my workplace, it really affected me. I wanted to go back so much but then all the stuff got back to me about how everyone kept thinking I was beating the system, taking advantage of the system, which isn’t the case.” (Worker 008) | |
Lack of trust | "There’s also the fear of if you go, then you may not ever get promoted or get moved to another unit or another job. No one wants to throw that black mark on their file. […] They say they don’t hold it against you, but in more times than not, when you look at other people who get promoted and get moved around, the ones who went off or were suffering with something, never get moved. They never seem to move forward. So, there’s still something going on.” (Worker 010) |