O-71 The effects of the labour inspectorate regulatory tools on doctor certified sickness absence in the Norwegian home care services – a cluster randomised controlled trial

Introduction

High levels of sickness absence related to musculoskeletal pain and mental disorders are prevalent in the home care services. Enforcement of occupational safety and health (OSH) regulations are structured to help ensure the safety of employees as well as preventing negative health outcomes. There is, however, a lack of knowledge on the effects of such enforcement on sickness absence due to musculoskeletal and mental disorders.

Material and Methods

Registry data with diagnoses on certified sick-leave 18 months post interventions for 1202 participants in 96 municipalities. Analyses took pre-intervention sickness absence into account. A cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted in the home care services. Eligible municipalities were randomly assigned to either the control group or one of two interventions: 1) labour inspection visit, based on the Labour Inspectorate Authority’s standard inspections; 2) guidance-through-workshop, one workshop where the participating services highlighted issues and trained labour inspectors provided guidance based on existing labour laws and regulations.

Results

There were no observable effect of either intervention on all musculoskeletal and psychological diagnoses (p>0.05). There were also no observable effects of the interventions when analysing musculoskeletal diagnoses(p>0.05) and psychological diagnoses(p>0.05) separately.

Conclusion

Neither labour inspections, nor guidance-through-workshop had any observable effect on overall sickness absence due to musculoskeletal and psychological diagnoses. This highlight the need to further elucidate how different regulatory tools may affect sickness absence and thus how it can be more effectively used as a preventive measure.