Fitness to Work Assessments

Fitness to Work Assessments

This is a medicolegal area where Doctors O’Regan and Madden have considerable experience. These are assessments undertaken by the employer to determine an employee's fitness to continue in their role. These assessments are undertaken by Medical Practitioners and where required, an Exercise Physiologist might also undertake a Functional Capacity Evaluation. 

There are situations where as an employer you may find one of your employees with a health condition that is impacting on their ability to work even to the extent where you think they may not be able to perform their job. What do you do under these circumstances? The Health Advantage can assess the employee thoroughly with each assessment based upon the individual condition or conditions present but also holistically enabling us to give the employer a full report as to how the condition or conditions might be impacting upon their ability to work, whether they are likely to improve over time, what their functional abilities are currently to perform the work, the prognosis and when relevant, any limitations or accommodations that the employer could reasonable make to allow the employee to perform their duties.

Functional Capacity Evaluations are an extremely important part of assessing the employee's suitability for a job, particularly in the pre-employment process but also post-injury on return to work. The evaluation is undertaken by an Exercise Physiologist and consists of an examination of all the joints with regards their range of movement and any impairments that may be present related to that joint. Their physical fitness is determined by a cardiovascular exercise test. Agility and balance are assessed along with a person's muscular strength and endurance. This produces an overall picture of a person's functional ability to undertake a job. 

Case Study 

A person had sustained a prior injury to their right shoulder and was of the opinion it had fully recovered because it had become pain-free. Functional testing however revealed that there was a restriction in the range of motion of the shoulder and muscular deficits in the operation of the shoulder. 

This restricted their ability to perform work at or above shoulder height. As this would be a genuine occupational requirement of the job we are able to provide the employer with a report that avoids that person being placed into a position that they did not have an ability to perform safely. 

Doctors O’Regan and Madden have accumulated eighty years of experience between them in treating people at a General Practice level for injury. They provide that experience to their client companies ensuring that workplace injuries are treated in a timely and efficient manner focusing on obtaining sound outcomes for the injured worker and the employing companies.

Functional testing is also available to guide the rehabilitation workers. At The Health Advantage we use limited functional assessments based on the area that the worker injured. These tests specifically test the shoulder, knee or back and allows us to accurately prescribe the suitable duties for that person and also guide us in other respects of their rehabilitation. 



A worker had injured his back some five weeks previously. He had been on a suitable programme and was successfully performing these. At review he had no pain for over a week, had a full range of motion in his back and no tenderness. Functional testing though revealed that lifts heavier than what he had been doing on the current suitable duties provoked pain and the postural tolerance and core stability testing revealed an overall weakness in the back musculature. Thus suitable duties were continued based on the results of the assessment and a referral was made based on the