Compensable Injury and Quality of Life

This study examined the quality of life of compensable accident victims. The sample comprised 254 participants who completed the World Health Organization's EUROHIS Quality of Life scale as part of a vocational assessment. As hypothesised, there was substantially lower quality of life with a mean rating of 2.70 (SD = 0.74) on a five-point scale from very dissatisfied to very satisfied. There were statistically significant differences in quality of life, favouring those living in a rural vs city location, those living in areas of low unemployment and those with higher skill levels. Those who had a non-work accident had higher levels of quality of life as did those without a spinal cord injury or psychiatric sequelae. Participants who returned to work had the highest level of quality of life. The time since the personal injury averaged 3.58 years (SD = 3.61) and quality of life was not correlated positively with the effluxion of time (r = 0.057). A tentative process model of quality of life was proposed based on the significant factors from this study and divided the factors into three stages based on their occurrence across time as early, intermediate or late in relation to the injury.