Introduction
I would like to welcome you to this webinar about office and workplace ergonomics. To give some background, I perform therapy at the individual's site. I work out of my home office, but go out to the workplace; whether it is a steel mill or a school. It depends upon where the injury has occurred. I work on transitioning them back to full duty, whatever that entails.
Ergonomics is a nice way to be able to incorporate our tools as OTs and put it to work right at the workplace. Somebody joked with me at the last session I presented saying I am actually doing home health in the workplace.
Workplace Ergonomics
We have all been told in our working life to work smarter, not harder. This is the basis behind ergonomics. We want to be able to prolong the worker's ability to remain at their workstation and be productive, while eliminating or reducing the possibility of injury.
This is common sense to an occupational therapist. This is how we were trained.
We were told to take an activity and see how we can modify it for our patient. We do that all the time in our practice. How do we make it easier or more improved? Again, this is the basis of ergonomics. We are the ideal group to be doing ergonomic assessments.
