We work in various facilities, from offices to off-shore oil rigs and from agricultural production to information technology. Our employees literally cover the spectrum from apples to zoological medications. One of the benefits of this wide exposure we have is the ability to recognize trends that happen across many different workplaces to better assess how to provide a safer environment for employees.
Repetitive Injuries Happen Everywhere
In our first discussions with new clients, they often tell us their dirty little secrets. They’re ashamed to admit…they have a problem with repetitive injuries. It might be an administrative office with a carpal tunnel issue. Perhaps, it is a production facility with problematic lower back issues. Maybe, there are housekeepers at a hotel who keep suffering shoulder strains. When they tell us their secret, we lower our voices to a whisper and tell them a secret in return. Every workplace has repetitive injuries.
Repetitive Injuries are Preventable and Addressable
The next secret that we share is one of our core focuses as occupational healthcare providers. We have programs focused directly on preventing repetitive injuries. To address repetitive injuries, you must have a specially trained practitioner who understands biomechanics—how the body moves. It is important to understand the forces placed on joints and tissues when an employee engages in certain actions. You have to understand ergonomics and physics. It is helpful to be able to predict where a given task will start to create a potential repetitive injury.
You also have to be able to take that knowledge and apply it, practically and in the field, to prevent injuries.
Injury prevention may mean counseling employees on safer ways to perform work. It also means engaging in early-stage first-aid type treatment that can ‘head off’ an injury before it becomes a lost-time incident. We have a team of employees focused on this very role.
The Injury Prevention Specialist
Our Injury Prevention Specialists are clinicians selected and trained in our RIP ProgramSM—Repetitive Injury Prevention. This program uses proactive therapies, Accuscope treatment, and trigger point modalities to prevent recordable injuries. By treating at the preventative/first-aid level, we avoid loss of productivity, injury, and OSHA recordables. The program minimizes or even eliminates lost-time incidents, and it works. Our Injury Prevention Specialists are trained to be clinicians whose focus is directed squarely at this work. Perhaps your facility doesn’t need the full-service clinical abilities of a Nurse Practitioner, but you still have recurring injuries. An Injury Prevention Specialist may be just what your workplace needs.
When we watch a professional sports game, and an athlete takes a hard fall, we’re used to seeing a team of medical professionals run out on the field and provide some immediate, hands-on support. Injury Prevention Specialists work to prevent injuries from occurring. Still, when those workplace tumbles do occur, they jump in and go hands-on to minimize the severity of the injury and allow for a quick recovery.
Enhancing Your Workplace Health
When we deploy Injury Prevention Specialists, we work to ensure that they are 100% utilized to give our clients the greatest return on investment. Injury Prevention Specialists can offer triage and emergency first aid in the event of a workplace emergency. They can offer basic biometrics screening and our much-loved ‘lunch and learn’ programs as a part of your wellness programs. They can offer OSHA-mandated training such as ladders or confined spaces training. In many instances, they can even support OSHA-mandated surveillance testing. That can include hearing conservation (audiometry), respirator fit testing and spirometry, and more. We work to ensure every program has value-adds such as this. Get more for your occupational healthcare dollar.
To find out more about Injury Prevention Specialists, contact us today.
