I’ve lived with rheumatoid arthritis since childhood so I know all too well how this disease affects every aspect of life. I had difficulties in school, it affected my family, and it influenced my career choices and participation at work. Early in my career, I pushed myself to ‘fit into’ the workplace but looking back, I know it negatively affected my health. I never spoke about arthritis with my employer until I had children – I couldn’t manage the disease with all of life’s new responsibilities as a parent.
I knew that if I was having difficulties at work, others were too. I volunteer with the Canadian Arthritis Patient Alliance (CAPA) and I pitched the idea for a workplace project to our Board of Directors who all live with arthritis. They were overwhelmingly supportive – many on our Board have struggled to stay employed and healthy.
The first step of the project was to launch a survey to better understand the workplace challenges of people living with arthritis and what they’ve done to stay in the workplace (you can view a poster on the results here). Unsurprisingly, 85% of people with arthritis reported that arthritis affects them in the workplace. Some of their key challenges were that work takes them away from life activities, and they have difficulties in staying focused due to fatigue. People were also asked what worked for them and how effective personal and workplace adaptations work them. These survey results informed the development of workplace resources to help people with arthritis at work. The workplace resources were reviewed by Dr. Arif Jetha, a Scientist at the Institute for Work and Health in Toronto, Canada who studies how to support people with disabilities in the workplace.
The workplace resources are organized into four different modules:
- Self-care for work – it describes how you can adjust non-work activities and manage your arthritis to better participate at work.
- Adapting the work environment for arthritis – it describes common workplace challenges and helpful workplace accommodations.
- Knowing your workplace rights – it describes the laws in Canada to accommodate people with disabilities at work. Although this information is specific to Canada, you can check out a disclosure checklist on page 3 to guide you in deciding whether to disclose information about arthritis to your employer.
- Workplace wisdom from patients (info-graphic) – This is a crowd sourced solution based on the advice provided by close to 400 people living with arthritis.
