If you or somebody you love has sustained a repetitive stress injury due to job-related duties, proving the injury can be difficult. Repetitive stress injuries tend to develop over longer periods of time, sometimes months or even years. Because these injuries are not immediately apparent, employers and workers’ compensation insurers often delay or deny a claim because they doubt the injury happened in the workplace.
If you suspect that you have sustained an RSI caused by your workplace activities, you need to seek medical assistance as soon as possible. The key to obtaining workers’ compensation for an RSI will be providing medical documentation that backs up your claim that this injury happened due to the work you do. You need to report any suspected workplace injury to your employer as soon as possible. This can be from the time you begin to feel pain or from when you have been diagnosed with an injury by a physician.
Most employers and insurance carriers will try to fight in RSI claim, usually by saying that the injury did not occur while the employee was working at the job site. For example, an employer or insurance carrier could argue that age, not workplace conditions, caused an employee’s arthritis. An employer could claim that outside activities caused a worker’s carpal tunnel syndrome, not repetitive workplace activities.