Quick answer
Start with the injury that is driving the decision or treatment problem
Choose the guide closest to the diagnosis, body part or psychological condition now affecting work capacity, treatment or weekly payments. If more than one injury is involved, start with the one linked to the insurer decision, surgery request, certificate of capacity or WPI issue you need to answer.
May have a claim
Where work caused the injury or materially aggravated an existing condition.
Benefits to check
Treatment expenses, weekly payments, suitable duties, WPI and dispute options.
Evidence to collect
Incident records, GP notes, scans, specialist reports, capacity certificates and actual duties.
Injury-specific NSW workers compensation guides
These pages are grouped by body part and injury type. They help injured workers identify the documents and questions that commonly matter: work cause, treatment approval, weekly payments, suitable duties, permanent impairment and insurer disputes.
For the broader claim pathway, start with the Workers compensation service overview. If you already have an injury diagnosis, use the guides below to focus the evidence without treating the diagnosis alone as the answer.
Evidence checklist before choosing a guide
Before relying on an injury-specific page, collect the practical documents that usually shape a NSW workers compensation decision: the incident report or work task description, certificates of capacity, GP and specialist notes, imaging or test results, treatment requests, payslips or pre-injury earnings material, and any insurer letters explaining acceptance, denial, work capacity or treatment decisions.
If the injury developed over time, write down the repeated duties, dates symptoms changed, when work was first reported as a cause, and any non-work factors the insurer may raise. This helps match the right guide to the real dispute rather than relying on the diagnosis label alone.
Practical first steps when the injury is disputed
If the insurer disputes whether work caused the injury, start by comparing the decision reasons with the medical timeline. Check whether the treating doctor has recorded the work incident, repeated duties or exposure clearly, and whether any imaging, specialist report or psychological assessment answers the exact issue the insurer raised.
If treatment, surgery, weekly payments or work capacity is the problem, keep the injury guide focused on that decision. A treatment dispute usually needs clinical reasons and prior treatment history; a weekly payment or capacity dispute usually needs certificates of capacity, suitable duties details, earnings information and the medical restrictions that explain what work is safe.
For the full claim sequence, cross-check the make a claim guide, the weekly payments guide and the workers compensation disputes guide. This page helps you choose the injury topic; those guides explain the broader NSW process.
Back, spine, and neck
Back, neck, spinal, nerve-root, pain and surgery-related claims.
Shoulder, arm, and hand
Shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand, nerve, tendon and overuse injuries.
Hip, leg, knee, ankle, and foot
Hip, pelvis, leg, knee, ankle, foot and lower-limb surgery issues.
Head, brain, face, and neurological
Head, brain, face, jaw, dental, eye, vestibular, nerve and chronic pain conditions.
Psychological injury
Psychological injury claims can involve section 11A and NSW reform issues, so the notice, chronology and medical evidence need careful document-based assessment.
Occupational disease and exposure
Disease, exposure, hearing, respiratory, skin, infection, heat and vibration-related conditions.
Serious and traumatic injuries
Traumatic, catastrophic and multi-system injuries needing long-term evidence planning.
Established injury guides
These existing guides remain linked while the broader injury library expands.
Multilingual publication rule
Non-English versions of these injury pages should only be published when they match the English page in substantive depth, section structure, metadata, schema and internal links. Thin translated summaries should remain out of the sitemap and non-indexable until completed.
Need the main claim pathway?
Main workers compensation service explains the broader claim process, while these injury pages focus on diagnosis-specific evidence and disputes.
Call NSW Work Injury Claim if you need to discuss a decision notice or capacity issue.
Request a claim review from the injuries hub if you want help matching the injury evidence to the disputed decision.