5 Tips to Help Make Going Back to Work Easier After a Crash

It’s hard going back to work while you’re still probably recovering from your injuries. However, with a few tips and a good line of communication with your manager or HR official, you can make it easier. Your first step, of course, is to go through all of your restrictions and instructions with your medical team. Once that is taken care of, you should reach out to an experienced Fayetteville car accident attorney so they can guide you through the next steps to take.

You’ll want to ensure that you have access to all the necessary resources and information to stay safe and to keep improving. That means that you might need to do a little extra in terms of paperwork, or even miss more work. It can be difficult to decide that missing work is best, but it is vital that you go through all the hoops to keep up with follow up appointments and more.

Schedule Your Follow Up Appointments

Human resource managers are usually in a bit of a sticky spot when it comes to asking for a doctor’s note. Your injuries made have qualified you for FMLA, the ADA, or it is counted towards standard sick leave.

Typically if you’re going to miss more than three days or have a series of consecutive absences due to follow-up appointments, you will need to provide a doctor’s note. But the best way to arrange this with your employer is to inform them about your follow up appointments as soon as you know about them. It may seem like going above and beyond, but keeping your employer informed about your recovery can help them understand what to expect from your performance and the time you’re spending at work.

Don’t Force It

There is a delicate balance between working within your abilities and strengthening muscles that were fatigued and pushing yourself too far. You never want to force something to work the way that it did before the crash without your physical therapist there to guide you. It is important to stop and take breaks just the same that it’s important to exercise and strengthen and stretch those muscles that need help recovering.

Work is not the place to push her limits. Make sure that you keep that for physical therapy and your check-ins with your doctor.

Have a Plan to Prevent Reinjury But To Address It If It Happens

When reinjury is a possibility, you want to ensure that you’re doing everything possible to not stress your injuries. That means using training and rehabilitation to your best advantage. It also means that you need to clearly communicate your limitations.

Many medical teams will suggest physical therapy with guided exercises to implement corrective measures. That means that they’ll basically teach you the right and the wrong way to go about your day-to-day activities.

Be Clear on Limitations and be Firm When Saying “No”

If your employer asks you to do something outside of your abilities, say no. It is difficult to learn how to say no to your employer, but when it comes to an injury, you’re not just saving yourself from reinjury, you’re saving them from a lawsuit.

Keep Information About Your Crash as Private as Possible

Keeping information about your crash private can be a bit difficult. A crash is usually something that is office talk, or something that concerned coworkers will talk about. But it doesn’t take long to go from sharing a bit of a story to having social media wildfire damaging your claim.

Information about your claim or lawsuit should be kept completely private and only involve your attorney and the insurance companies involved. Make sure that you don’t make it standard office talk or that you don’t take to social media to sharing anything about the wreck. Even saying something like, “I’m okay,” can damage the value of your claim.

Call Your Attorney When You’re Going Back to Work

Whenever you go back to work, there is always the risk of reinjury, and with some types of damage, it’s more difficult to avoid reinjury. What you can do is to alert your attorney that your medical team or your doctor has cleared you to return to work. Then provide them with all the information or documentation you have available on work restrictions and medical notes about your injuries. It is important that you keep your attorney in the loop.

If you haven’t yet found a car accident attorney, then call Wade Law. Our car crash lawyers are ready to dive into your options for compensation and how to move forward with your case in the most methodical way possible.

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