Governmental support measures to maintain the working capacity of people with multiple sclerosis

BACKGROUND: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammation of the central nervous system that can result in cognitive and physical deficits. It can lead to early retirement in 50% of the cases in the first 15 years of the disease without governmental support and to date there are only few studies which focus on the measures to support people with MS at the workplace. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to analyse the governmental support measures to maintain the working capacity of people with MS and to provide improvement and further approaches for their support. METHODS: A two-stage study was conducted by means of qualitative interviews. The first study was conducted using the problem-centred form with 10 experts from the health and social care sector who work with people affected by MS. The second study was conducted using qualitative interviews in biographical form with 20 people suffering from MS. RESULTS: The study participants mentioned various suggestions for improving the existing governmental support measures, such as a central support office for illness related questions, relaxing the strict requirements for support measures, giving the regulation of support measures to federal government, changing the pension system and financial support for individual therapies and outpatient therapies. Currently, MS patients lack knowledge about contact persons for MS-specific questions, as well as intensive cooperation between labour market service, health service providers and companies to help finding a job. CONCLUSION: A combination of the governmental support measures available so far with the proposed optimisations or additions by MS patients and experts can lead to a significant reduction in disease-specific absences and limitations, which in turn results in the preservation of the ability to work. All suggestions from the interviews need to be explored further to investigate a possible implementation.