Looking for Injured Workers in NC/Southern VA for Interviews on the Unexpected Impact of Work Injury/Worker’s Comp

I am a safety professional and former registered nurse, between jobs at the moment with time to spare. I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a mini series of video interviews with workers who have been injured, exploring the ways that the injury impacted them. In safety, a lot of my peers tend to focus on the injury itself and how it’s classified on the OSHA logs (i.e. recordable, lost time). Sometimes they’ll share and discuss gruesome videos of work accidents, but it still doesn’t convey what happens to workers after the fact. I don’t think people in my industry generally understand how much work injuries, even relatively minor ones, can cause drastic changes for workers and their families. I worked briefly as a case manager in worker’s comp, and I saw/heard so much from the workers and that really helped me understand how my actions as a safety professional can do more than just prevent an “incident” at work. Lots of them ended up having relationship breakdowns (often due to financial distress), had difficulty putting food on the table for their families, or even just the struggle of not being able to do what they used to enjoy in their free time.

If you are currently dealing with the worker’s comp system (I.e. have an open claim) this may not be for you - I wouldn’t want anything you say to potentially impact your claim. But if you are past that and have a story you are interested in sharing, please leave a comment or send me a message. I’m looking to do these interviews in person over the next couple of weeks, send off the footage for editing, and post them during Construction Safety Week at the beginning of May. (You don’t need to have worked in construction, that’s just my particular industry and most of my followers/connections on LinkedIn are in the same specialty).

I live near Raleigh, NC, but am open to traveling within a couple hours of here to meet with people to interview. I would be looking to post these as long form videos on YouTube, with short form snippets shared on other platforms like LinkedIn. I unfortunately do not make any money from the content I have made so far, so I would not be in a position to compensate you although I wish that I could. I’m just hoping to help actually improve things in our industry - the fatality rate in construction has stayed relatively the same for at least 10 years, and although they say non-fatal incidents are down, that’s based on OSHA logs and doesn’t match up with worker’s comp claims (I.e. still seeing just as many claims in comp, it’s basically creative “case management” or sometimes downright falsified information). Most of everything that’s currently written about in safety is just the same old regurgitated stuff and that’s clearly not working. We owe the workers more than we are currently giving them, at least in my humble opinion.