Written by: Shana Carter, PT, DPT, OCS, UDN-C, EDD
Injury rates in rehab professionals in the United States continues to remain a primary concern for both clinicians and employers due time lost at work, potential for long-term issues following injury and healthcare cost to both the employee and employer. However, in many healthcare settings where clinicians are employed, ergonomic training is often treated as a check-in-the-box task for training and less like a viable injury prevention and risk mitigation tool. Factors including clinician caseload, frequency of breaks during the day and activity lifestyle practices outside of the workplace are rarely factored into ergonomic training in the healthcare environment.
The Daily Tasks Quietly Driving Clinician Injury
The highest rate of injury among rehab clinicians is often directly related to patient transfers, patient mobility tasks or performance of repeated tasks in manual therapy without proper joint protection strategies. Also landing in the top of category for clinician mechanisms of injury in the workplace is attempting to complete tasks in awkward positions and maintaining positions with poor postural alignment for extended periods of time.
“Every injury to a health care worker is preventable. Every one of them.” (Gerwing, 2023)
If you are a clinician who is interested in branching into ergonomics consulting, decreasing your personal injury risk at your workplace or helping healthcare teams keep their rehab employees active and injury free this course is for you! Join us as we explore how to develop and implement real life ergonomic solutions that meet daily clinical demands for clinicians instead of simply being a check-in-the box training course you have to attend!
References
Gerwig, K. (2023, October 27). “Every injury to a health care worker is preventable.” Institute for Healthcare Improvement. https://www.ihi.org/library/blog/every-injury-health-care-worker-preventable
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