Many people ask; ‘what do you treat most often Downtown?’, to that I reply; “mostly neck and back injuries, just from sitting all day at a workstation”.
Here’s where my over 30,000 hours of experience as a physiotherapist, who provides specific assessment, feedback, education and instruction in Occupational Ergonomics, or how we interact with our ‘work tasks’, benefits my patients of the grain, finance and legal hub of Winnipeg.
As a physiotherapist, I must assess your workstation and task challenges in order to understand your biomechanics that caused an injury or pain. I only use evidence based guidelines published, and reviewed annually (CSA link http://t.co/Su0MxsFy). Beware of those ‘weekend course’ assessors, quite frankly you will get what you pay for.
You, and your company can reduce repetitive strain complaints in your workplace with an ergonomic assessment at your specific, work site. I will assess problem areas and make recommendations for change to workstations, task organization and management, and your specific, body mechanics with a focus on employee participation, responsibility and behaviour change.
A worksite visit to understand your business and jobs will only provide a baseline for understanding the demands on workers. It will provide us with an ability to recommend modifications for ergonomic improvements and safe body mechanics training.
By providing immediate feedback; employees are able to participate and install immediate, habitual changes at work, home and play, that assist in improving compliance with safe work procedures, and biomechanics that prevent injury.
The main risk factors for musculoskeletal injury can be categorized under one of the following four broad headings: force, posture, repetition and duration of task. In the office or call center, even the hair stylist, dental hygienist and GAMERS! environment these risk factors could be interpreted as;
- force – is an exertion performed to overcome the weight, resistance, or inertia of the body or a work object (i.e. forceful hand movements while keying or mousing),
- posture – awkward postures deviate from neutral or comfortable positions. (i.e. twisted neck, raised shoulder, extended wrist, etc..),
- repetition – refers to tasks or series of motions that are performed over and again by the same muscle groups with little variation (i.e. continuous mousing or keying)
- duration – the time which something continues (i.e. sustained neck extension to view monitor or abducted shoulder while mousing)
check back again for more on this continuing series regarding your ‘sitting in Winnipeg’…
