Regardless of the nature or extent of your injury, for it to be deemed work-related, your employment must play a crucial role as a 'significant contributing factor.'
Physical injuries
These types of injuries are defined as ‘damage to the body from an external force’ and can be different degrees of seriousness.
They can include:
- cuts and lacerations
- burns and abrasions
- penetrating wounds
- broken bones and fractures.
Mental injuries
Mental injuries (also known as psychological and psychiatric injuries) are conditions that cause abnormal thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.
They include (but aren’t limited to):
- depression
- anxiety
- post-traumatic stress disorder.
Diseases
These are abnormal medical conditions that affect all or part of your body as a result of things like infection, inflammation, or environmental factors.
They can include (but aren’t limited to):
- industrial deafness
- Q-fever
- work-related respiratory diseases such as asbestosis, silicosis, and others.
Aggravated injury or ongoing symptoms
Aggravated injury
Sometimes doing your job can make a pre-existing injury worse or more serious. The pre-existing injury could be work-related or non-work-related.
If this happens, you’ll need to make a new claim.
Ongoing symptoms
Sometimes you might continue to have symptoms from your original injury, even after you’ve gone back to work and your claim is closed.
If you’re experiencing ongoing symptoms, you can contact WorkCover (or the worker’s compensation section of your employer if they’re self-insured).
Once it’s confirmed your symptoms are related to your original injury, your claim might be reopened. Contact WorkCover on 1300 362 128.
Very serious physical injuries (also called ‘critical injuries’) are those that cause permanent damage or impairment. You can read about them, as well as claiming when someone dies at work, by following the links below.
- Critical injuries
- Work-related fatalities
Our injury information pack (DOCX, 0.61 MB) is designed to help employers understand what is required in the event of a workplace injury, and to support an injured worker with a timely return to work.