There is no information about the length of the sickness absence reported at baseline, but data from Statistics Norway show that more than 60%% of all absence days during a year are part of a sick leave with duration of more than 31 days [ 40].
Participants were assessed on clinical status, yellow flags, sickness absence and work performance at baseline, after treatment and at 3 month follow up.
Still, in our analyses, we were able to adjust for self-reported health at baseline, as well as previous sickness absence.
Low social support at baseline might have contributed to elevated sickness absence in the first place, as demonstrated in several studies.
Therefore, in addition to estimating the strength of relationships in the total analytic sample, we performed analyses stratified by gender, while adjusting for demographic and employment variables, depression at baseline, past redundancies and long-term sickness.
The observed association of physiotherapy with an increased risk of sickness absence/disability pension was independent from self-reported somatic symptoms at baseline.
However, men, younger participants, those with lower socioeconomic position and long sickness absence were slightly over-represented among the non-respondents at baseline and more likely to drop-out over the follow-up, or decline consent for register linkage.
Therefore, in this study we will investigate the independent attribution of work characteristics to medical care- seeking in Dutch workers with health complaints at baseline, after controlling for personal, health and sickness absence related factors, in a longitudinal dataset.
In addition to the questions asked at baseline, this questionnaire also asked women about experiencing nausea or sickness during pregnancy 32 and their concerns about weight gain as a result of stopping smoking.
The outcomes will be measured by questionnaires at baseline, after 6, 12, and 24 months, and sickness absence will be obtained from the employer's registers.
