What to Tell Your Doctor about Your Work Injury
If you’ve been injured on the job and are trying to get workers’ compensation benefits in Virginia, talking to your doctor throughout your treatment will be very important. There are several important pieces of information your doctor will need to help protect an injured workers Virginia workers’ compensation claim, as well as any possible future settlement.
Injured Workers: Things Your Doctor Needs to Know
- First, tell your authorized treating physician exactly what happened when you injured yourself. Be sure to give specific details. Just being at work when the injury occurred is not enough to make you eligible for workers’ comp in Virginia. In fact, in Virginia, your work injury must have occurred not only while you were working, but also while you were doing your job.
- Be sure to tell your doctor about any pre-existing injuries or conditions. Having a similar injury before being injured on the job won’t automatically disqualify you from receiving workers’ comp benefits. So, be sure not to hide anything or hold anything back.
- Give your treating doctor details about what your job requires. It will be important for your doctor to know whether your job requires a lot of lifting, standing, etc. If your doctor gives you work restrictions, make sure you give those restrictions to your supervisor at work so they can find light duty work for you.
- If you have a hard time completing any of your work tasks after your job injury, be sure to let your doctor know exactly what movements aggravate your injury and increase your pain.
- If you have severe pain in the evening or on the weekend and your treating doctor’s office is closed, you may consider getting emergency medical care. If you do go to the emergency room for severe pain or urgent situation, be certain to provide that information to your treating doctor.
*Please note that Virginia workers’ compensation doesn’t include coverage for pain and suffering.
Workers’ Compensation Doctor: Follow the Treatment Plan
After your authorized treating physician communicates a treatment plan to you, it is of utmost importance that you carefully follow it. If your doctor requests physical therapy or follow-up appointments, it is very important that you keep your appointments. Having “No Show” recorded in your records looks bad to the workers compensation insurance company, and may make it seem like you are not following your doctor’s orders. This could hurt your workers comp claim.
Also, taking your medications as your workers comp doctor has prescribed is also important. If you have adverse reactions to the medication, tell your doctor immediately.
Keep a Pain Journal
Keeping a pain journal can be very helpful to your doctors and will allow them to fully understand the nature and extent of your pain and symptoms. Often, the medical care for the injured worker will be based on information recorded in the pain journal. To keep the pain journal, simply use a notebook to record your pain levels on a daily basis, as well as when the pain occurs and what movements or actions recreate your pain.
Medical Treatment: Have a List of Everything You Want to Cover
Your workers comp doctor will likely have very busy patient schedules. They may be hurried when they enter the exam room for your appointment. So, it will be important for you to keep a list of all the questions and information you want to make sure you cover during your appointment time.
Also, keeping a record of all of your appointment dates, as well as any phone calls you make to the doctor’s office will help in the instance that there are any mistakes in your medical records from the doctor’s office. An additional item to include in your workers’ comp files will be any medical bills you might receive for treatment.
Virginia Workers’ Compensation: Talking to Your Doctor
As you can see from the information above, in Virginia workers’ compensation talking to your doctor throughout your treatment is extremely important. In fact, besides talking to an attorney about your workers’ comp claim, talking to your doctor is likely the most important communication while you are injured.
Your Virginia Workers’ Compensation Team
In addition to having good communication with your doctor, your workers’ comp team at the Ritchie Law Firm is happy to sit down with you and talk with you to see if you have a workers comp claim that needs to have an attorney involved. It doesn’t cost anything to talk with us. If it’s possible to handle your claim on your own, we will give you the information to help you handle your claim with the workers compensation insurance company.
We have a wealth of information and resources available to us, and we’re always happy to share. Give us a call today at 800-277-6124 for your NO STRINGS ATTACHED conversation with our workers’ comp. lawyers. We handle Virginia Workers’ Compensation cases out of our offices in Harrisonburg, Winchester, Charlottesville, and Staunton, Va. Or, if you just want to test the waters first, get some more information by filling out the form below. We look forward to working with you.
