Material and method:

The following bibliographic databases were reviewed until November 2018: SciELO, PUBMED, and other sources reviewed in bibliography.

Objective:

To emphasize the need for establishing policies for the return of workers after incapacity for work, for the integral and integrative management of the service and the improvement of occupational health with economic protection criteria and preventive occupational protection criteria.

Conclusions:

The policies of returning to work after long-term incapacity for work require, in matters of social security, to improve the registration systems, to prepare an Incapacity or Disability Planning in Spain, to implement changes in order to improve the decision-making process, to facilitate the communication of occupational health information among the healthcare area, the benefit area and the occupational area, to improve the company-worker relationship and the protection system, to facilitate partial discharge, to enable the sick leave and medical discharge situations according with different work requirements, to achieve a balance between work and personal life, to implement flexible schedules, to make use of an Occupational File in order to have full concrete knowledge of the work requirements by the care and benefit area, to avoid the controversy between not fit and medical discharge or no disability, to guarantee occupational biosecurity, to promote environment healthy work, to ensure the greatest rigor in determining the causal of work as a source of disease, to implement specific return to work programs for workers with musculoskeletal disorders and minor psychiatric disorders and to implement a cancer strategy implementation plan for workers with cancer. Changes in the management paradigm that incorporate preventive criteria and assess work disability (“non-return to work”) as an indicator of health management and an indicator of occupational health are needed. Changes in the norm are needed to make all of this possible.