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Background Several occupational health disciplines are involved in return to work guidance, implying that good interdisciplinary collaboration is important. A shared conceptual framework and a common language for the assessment of work capacity and guidance in return to work is expected to be at the benefit of appropriate and sustainable employability of sick employees. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) can be considered a shared conceptual framework and is also promising in terms of a common language. The purpose of the current study is to reach multidisciplinary consensus among occupational health professionals on the content of an ICF-based instrument for the assessment of work capacity and guidance in return to work. Methods To obtain multidisciplinary consensus we conducted a modified Delphi study among twelve occupational health experts, including four occupational physicians, four insurance physicians and four labour experts. The study included two e-mail rounds and two virtual meetings. In the consecutive rounds the experts assessed ICF items as well as a list of non-ICF-based work-related environmental factors on their relevance for the assessment of the work capacity and guidance in return to work together with their interpretability. Results The four consecutive Delphi rounds resulted in 20 items that are minimally needed for the assessment of the work capacity and return to work possibilities of employees on sick leave. The final list included six items on personal functioning, seven items on social functioning and seven items on physical functioning. Conclusions This set of items forms the core of an ICF-based instrument, which is expected to facilitate interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary communication because of the use of a shared conceptual framework. As such, it should be of help in the guidance in return to work of employees on sick leave and contribute to appropriate and sustainable employability.

Background Assessing prognosis is challenging for many physicians in various medical fields. Research shows that physicians who perform disability assessments consider six areas when evaluating a prognosis: disease, treatment, course of the disease, external information, patient-related and physician-related aspects. We administered a questionnaire to evaluate how physicians rate the importance of these six prognosis areas during work disability evaluation and to explore what kind of support they would like during prognosis assessment. Methods Seventy-six physicians scored the importance of 23 prognostic aspects distributed over six prognosis areas. Participants scored the importance of each aspect both “in general” and from the perspective of a case vignette of a worker with a severe degenerative disease. The questionnaire also covered needs and suggestions for support during the evaluation of prognoses. Results Medical areas that are related to the disease, or the treatment or course of the disease, appeared important (scores of 7.0–9.0), with less differing opinions among participants (IQR 1.0–3.0). Corresponding verbatim remarks supported the importance of disease and treatment as prognostic aspects. In comparison, patient- and physician-related aspects scored somewhat lower, with more variability (range 4.0–8.0, with IQR 2.0–5.0 for patient- and physician-related considerations). Participants indicated a need for a tool or online database that includes prognostic aspects and prognostic evidence. Conclusions Despite some variation in scores, the physicians rated all six prognosis areas as important for work disability evaluations. This study provides suggested aids to prognosis assessment, including an online support tool based on evidence-based medicine features.