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Return to light duty work? It may only help your company.

A lot of times people get injured and the company right away will insist that you come back and do light duty work or sometimes they even push you back out to an oil rig or a boat where they've got you doing medium duty work. Now let me tell you a couple things about running back to work very quickly. No. 1 is the company's going to have a lot of people watching you when you're back at work. You'll be amazed at how many people will come into court months and months later and swear up and down that they saw you doing very heavy activities out there.

The second thing about going back to work real early is a lot of times the doctors that see you after you go back to work they're going to say you know what if he's back at work he's probably good enough to work so I'm going to go ahead and let him keep on working. It becomes this circle where because you're back at work the doctors release you at that point.

Now another thought about going back to work is a big part of your case may be a loss of wage claim. A lot of guys working in the maritime industry make very good money and when they get hurt if they can't go back to full duty heavy labor they're going to lose a whole lot of wages. When you go back to work even if it's temporary what you're doing is proving the company's case against you. They look at it as you are proving that you can continue making as much as you used to make. That's very important that you remember that.

All right now I want to leave you with a final thought about trying to rush back to work too early. You should never go back to work unless you believe you could be hired by another company in the shape that you're in. If your company's going to offer you some sort of sheltered employment that they're making up for you and they're accommodating you, you want to ask yourself can I go in off the street to another company and actually get that type of job. If you can't then you shouldn't be out there working.