Matheson Philosophy on Workplace Safety and Work Injury Evaluation

"The most disabling workplace injuries and illnesses in 2009 amounted to $50.1 billion in direct U.S. workers compensation costs. After adjusting for inflation, this year’s costs decreased 6.5 percent from 2008." (2011 Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index) That's a big chunk of change coming out of American business owner's pockets and 25.4% of that cost is a result of "overexertion" injuries, which is described by Liberty Mutual as "injuries from excessive lifting, pushing, pulling, holding, carrying, throwing". As ergonomic evaluators, you know that more often than not this type of injury is preventable... but how do you convince the business owner who you believe can benefit from your services and ergonomic expertise? 

A checklist helps to identify ergonomic risks and to predict severity. The following is a short compilation of some of the most important qualities that an evaluator should be looking for in an ergonomic checklist:

The ANSI Z-365 is a proactive survey form. It is one of the only quantitative forms that are accepted worldwide, the other being the NIOSH Lifting Formula. Further, it is one of the most comprehensive forms available as compared to the REBA or the RULA.

Matheson has been on Twitter for quite some time now, but we just discovered a very cool new tool that we would love to share with you! It's called Paper.li and is an automatic aggregate of the shared content of select people/organizations that we follow on Twitter and/or Facebook. We have chosen these specific sources to bring you a daily feed of occupational rehabilitation, occupational medicine, workplace safety and ergonomics news stories, events, videos, etc.

Tonight, after watching a 40 lb, 3 ft long, 10 inch thick block of ice come barreling down my roof and directly hitting the 24 foot extension ladder upon which my husband was standing, almost causing him to fall straight backward, I asked him ever-so-politely:

It will come as no surprise that the year 2010 has changed occupational rehabilitation, functional capacity evaluation, post-offer testing and employment testing forever. Through my daily talks with clinicians and employers from across the land, I am struck with how far behind many are in terms of appreciating the changes that occurred this year. Many are stuck in the old ways of thinking about testing current or returning employees; this old way of thinking needs to be quickly updated to address the new current reality as seen in the federal courts.

The concept of a normal person underlies standard industrial practice in North American and European countries. Most ergonomics knowledge applies to “regular adults” in the age range from 20 to 50 years. Regular working adults are considered people qualified, fully trained, and able satisfactorily to perform any and all phases of the work under customary conditions at a pace representative of average.

The term repetitive is often used in work restrictions. When most of us look at the term repetitive, we need to question what is the intended use of the word.

Now that you know how to determine ergonomic risk factors, read this post to learn the methods recommended for measuring and quantifying these risk factors.

One of the common questions we receive here at Matheson is, "What kind of tools and equipment will I need to do an ergonomic evaluation?"