Articles

A recovery roadmap — Navigating cultural crossroads in Carlos's RTW: Part 1

Lauren Finestone

Using a navigation metaphor — including navigation tips for RTW professionals — we explore a factory worker's journey to show how language barriers, cultural factors, passive coping strategies and unaddressed concerns can create detours on the road to recovery.

Carlos is a 56-year-old factory worker from El Salvador with 15 years at a manufacturing plant. He's been experiencing increasing lower back pain. Before mapping his journey, we need to understand the cultural terrain he navigates each day as an older immigrant in a workplace dominated by younger, local-born colleagues. Carlos feels more comfortable expressing himself in Spanish. Technical medical terminology and nuanced descriptions of his pain...

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Published 06 May, 2025 | Updated 06 May, 2025