Barriers to Maintaining Employment with SLE

Barriers to Maintaining Employment with SLE

About a year ago many of you took part in our research which tried to find out (i) why so many people with lupus have difficulty staying in paid employment  and (ii) to understand about the difficulties of claiming benefits when you are unable to work. We’re delighted to say that the first paper on employment in lupus has been published in the leading journal, Lupus‘;

“Fluctuation, invisibility, fatigue – the barriers to maintaining employment with systemic lupus erythematosus: results of an online survey”. S BoothE PriceE Walker

The title sums up the results of the research. You can access the paper by clicking on the title above, or you can download a pdf HERE. Fortunately the paper is ‘open access’ which means you can share it without worrying about copyright. If you have a social media account it would be great if you could send it around or talk about its contents.

We had an overwhelming response which gives our results great authority – thank you once again. We will be publishing the paper on benefits in the next year. We will also write an article for LUPUS UK News & Views Magazine on the other research work available on lupus and employment. It is something that is hugely important to many people with lupus. It is clear that appropriate work (even in small amounts supplemented by benefits) can help improve the physical and psychological health of people living with this difficult disease.

We hope you will be able to use this research data in your workplace or in campaigning work to highlight the difficulties that people with lupus face and how their opportunities can be improved. The benefits paper will also be very powerful and we will be in touch when that is published.

– Dr Sara Booth, Dr Elizabeth Price, Professor Liz Walker

 

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