Eliminating Ergonomic Injuries is as Simple as An Ounce of Prevention

Preventable ergonomic injuries account for fully one-third of all workplace injuries and illnesses. As a result, U.S. employers pay more than $15 billion in workers compensation claims for these injuries every year. In addition, as many as 785,000 lost work days are reported as a result of ergonomic injuries annually. These direct costs may pale in comparison to the indirect costs associated with lost employee productivity and turnover. Ergonomics is defined as; “designing the job, equipment and tools to fit the worker, and fitting the worker to the job.” Of course its important to place the right person in a particular job and making sure they have the right equipment for that job. However, there are other factors to consider in reducing the exposure of your workforce to work related injuries your business experiences. Fortunately, the vast majority of ergonomic related injuries are completely preventable, saving your company significant money and lost work time. The saying; “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” by Benjamin Franklin is as appropriate now as it was in the 1700’s.

The most common work related ergonomic injuries such as, carpal tunnel syndrome, back injuries and tendinitis are classified as musculoskeletal disorders (MSD’s) or cumulative trauma disorders (CTD’s). Regardless of the definition, these are injuries of the muscles, nerves, tendons, ligaments, joints, cartilage and/or spinal discs. The costs associated with these conditions can be overwhelming, not only for the employer, but the employee as well. For example, carpal tunnel syndrome - characterized by pain in the wrist from pressure on a nerve, usually caused by repetitive, frequent, or unsupported wrist movements from an unnatural angle – is the leading cause of lost work time with nearly half of cases resulting in more than 31 days of work lost. For the employee, only 23% of the individuals requiring surgery can return to their previous profession. Nearly 36% of all CTS patients require unlimited medical treatment! Back pain is one of the most common reasons for missed work and is estimated that as many as 80% of the U.S. population will experience back pain at some point in their life.

Fortunately, many of these cases can be prevented with the proper strategy and for a relatively small investment. Creating a prevention-conscious culture will go a long way in building strong participation in your injury prevention program. The idea behind ergonomics is to simply reduce the stressors that contribute to the musculoskeletal and repetitive use injuries. Most people recognize that setting up a workstation ergonomically is important in addition to proper lifting techniques. However, its common to still see secretaries habitually holding the phone against their ear with their shoulder creating neck problems, or assembly workers performing the same movements over and over creating imbalanced muscle patterns that set the stage for injury. Another concern is the chronic and repeated use of over-the-counter pain medications and anti-inflammatory drugs to treat the symptoms of pain resulting from improper ergonomics and imbalanced function. Although this will provide temporary relief, over time this strategy will most certainly lead to a more extensive injury down the road causing further financial loss and lost productivity. The strategy of the continued use of medications for these conditions is severely limited since they only cover-up the symptoms without addressing the underlying cause of the pain and dysfunction.

In order to prevent this scenario, its necessary to create a strategy that encourages and supports employees to look for ways to diminish the stressors in their home and work environment, recognize the signs and symptoms of a problem and understand when it is appropriate to implement passive and active types of self-therapy to help relieve the underlying cause of the problem. Implementing a policy where individuals that perform phone work must utilize a headset, computer users have wrist supports, and cross-training assembly workers to rotate to different stations if possible to reduce the day-to-day repetitive motions they are exposed to.
In the early stages, several self-administered passive and active therapies can have not only a pain relief effect, but a healing effect as well. Nearly all of these injuries will respond favorably to ice therapy, massage, stretching and strengthening exercises. For example, people experiencing carpal tunnel pain will often have tight and sore muscles in the back of the forearm. These tight muscles contribute to the wrist pain by restricting the normal motion of the wrist bones and can be relieved by using light, but firm massage pressure on the affected muscles. Stretching the affected muscles is also an important self-directed therapy that will alleviate the underlying muscle tension. The underlying cause of many cases of back pain can be due to weak core strength. Performing the correct core exercises combined with stretching, massage, manipulation and ice therapy can have tremendous advantages to prevent full blown injuries to the muscles, discs and ligaments. For sure, if someone experiences severe, sharp pain they should consult with a qualified health care provider.

For business leaders that are concerned about the high costs of health care and the recent health care reform legislation, the time is now to develop a comprehensive prevention strategy for the ergonomic injuries that are draining the profitability out of your business.

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Eliminate Costly Work-Related Injuries That are Draining the Profitability out of Your Business

Current Health Care Reform is Only Step One

I have been saying for a while that the current efforts at health care reform is really only disease care reform. The fact that there is not much mention about true prevention, shows that the current efforts are merely an attempt to absorb the costs for more disease. The current level of $2.3 trillion in spending in the United States on the treatment of disease is pathetic. Especially when 75% of it is for preventable conditions such as, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and stroke. The unfortunate problem with the current reform efforts is that it won't do anything to slow that growth. Most experts agree that despite the current reform, our spending on this so called "health care" will be at $4.4 trillion within the next ten years. Wellness is the only solution. Check out this article from the New York Times for more.

Big Food vs. Big Insurance

The Power

Within every man woman and child is an inborn healing potential that defies logic. It is the unexplainable, infinite power that controls all matter in the universe and is within each of us at our disposal. Our job is to simply remove the interference to this incredible potential. The power that made the body, heals the body and it doesn't happen any other way.

How else can you explain how our body can even function. It is estimated that the average human body has approximately 80 trillion cells and each one of those cells performs about 200 million functions every single minute without our concious control.

Our job in life is to remove any interference to the wonderful master control mechanism of our healing and function. By fueling with healthy, vital foods, moving our body, resting our body and maintaining our vital body systems like our immune, digestive, muscular, lymphatic, circulatory and nervous systems, provide the proper building blocks and remove detrimental interferences to our healing capacity. That is what health, wellness and healing is all about.

Have a great day!

Slash Your Risk of Disease

A recent study examining the habits of 23,153 individuals have shown that participating in the following healthy lifestyle factors drastically reduces the risk of developing diabetes, heart attack, stroke and cancer. The healthy lifestyle factors included the following; never smoking, engaging in a minimum of 3.5 hours of physical activity each week, eating a diet low in red meat and high in fruits and vegetables, and having a body mass index lower than 30. Compared with individuals that practiced none of the four, those with all four showed a 93 percent reduced risk for developing diabetes, an 81 percent reduced risk for a heart attack, a 50 percent reduced risk for stroke and a 36 percent reduced risk for cancer.

Your health is up to you. Each individual must take action for themselves to be truly healthy. For further information, tune in to WSRQ AM1220 every Saturday from 11 am to Noon. Or, Log on to WWW.WSRQRadio.com and listen live.