Hello, my name is John Alexander, and I’m a personal injury attorney based out of Oakland County, Michigan, but practicing statewide. Today, I want to talk about workers’ compensation. Many times people get injured at work and the thing about a work injury, we call that workers’ compensation, is your employer, if you’re injured at work, has to pay your wage loss and your medical expenses. But you can’t sue for pain and suffering. All you have to prove is that the work environment or your job caused aggravated or accelerated an injury or a preexisting condition. You do not have to prove fault. You don’t have to prove that the employer did something wrong, but the tradeoff is, as I said, you can’t sue for pain and suffering. So you’re injured at work, and what’s going to happen is your employer is going to send you to a “company doctor.” This company doctor is going to look at you and exam you, in probably two to five minutes, and send you back to work and they’re going to say, you’re fine. You had a back a neck strain, or whatever. But many times this quick exam isn’t good enough or isn’t thorough enough, and people still are hurting. So, understand that you have a right to see your own doctor if you are injured at work. You have to see the company doctor, but if you’re still hurting and you still feel you can’t do your job. You by all means can go see your own doctor. Your own doctor is going to take care of you better. He’s going to do a more thorough exam. He may even order diagnostic testing such as MRI, CT-scan, EEG, whatever. Or he may even send you to a specialist. And if you are really hurt, your doctor will restrict you or disable you from work. Now, just know that, in the short term, you probably would be responsible, out-of-pocket, for paying your own doctor for the cost of treatment. But you could recoup that down the road in the workers’ compensation realm and then it also the dispute arises where your employer says, well you can work, and your own doctor says you can’t work, and that’s when you need to contact an attorney to file a worker’s compensation claim for you.