Multidisciplinary team meetings between occupational health practitioners and a pain clinic for the management of patients in employment with chronic pain

Purpose of the study. More than 60% of patients with chronic pain experiment difficulties in their job with a high impairment of their quality of life. Their management is often late, complex and compartmentalized. The Reseau Douleur chronique Sud-Est (REDOSE) is an interface between occupational health practitioners in the Southeast of the France and the pain and palliative care department of the university medical centre of Nice to manage chronic pain in a complete approach with the help of multidisciplinary team meetings (MTM). At this meeting, a personalized program of medicopsychosocioprofessional care (PPC) is created. The aim is to study the interest of these MTM "pain and occupational health services". Method. Our retrospective and descriptive study included all patients who participated in MTM between 2007 and 2009. The impact of the MTM was assessed through the number of patients who continued or returned to work in March, 2010, thus at three to 26 months after their inclusion. Results. We included 129 medical reports, which were presented in MTM. The mean age was 45. They predominantly had suffered from low back pain (74% of the population) for two years. Out of the 110 studied patients, 31 were on sick leave because of a work accident, eight for professional disease and 26 for disease, 15 worked with difficulties and 30 were unemployed. The PPC proposed 110 pain assessments, 97 psychological evaluations, 60 social evaluation and 73 referrals to the occupational health practitioner and to disabled adult departmental center. In March 2010, 45% of the patients in sick leave and 13% of the unemployed patients had returned to work, 800% of the patients who worked with difficulties had continued to work, after a mean follow-up of eight months. Conclusion. MTM in a hospital-ambulatory network decompartmentalize the different healtheares actors and improve the possibility of returning to work with a global biopsycho-socioprofessional approach. (C) 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.