A systematic review of interventions to retain chronically ill occupationally active employees in work: can findings be transferred to cancer survivors?

AbstractBackground: Interventions supporting occupationally active cancer survivors to retain work and prevent adverse work outcomes, beyond return to work, are scarce. As lessons may be learned from interventions that have been evaluated in working employees with other chronic diseases than cancer, the objective of this review was to summarize the characteristics of these interventions.Material and methods: Studies were identified through computerized PubMed, EMBASE and PsycINFO searches, without any language or year of publication restrictions. Randomized controlled trials were included if they evaluated the effectiveness of interventions to retain chronically ill occupationally active employees in work. Two authors independently extracted data from each study and assessed the risk of bias.Results: The search identified 536 unique studies, of which 18 met the inclusion criteria. All included studies had a low risk of bias. (Psycho-)educational interventions for chronically ill employees to retain work w...