rising incidence of shoulder injuries

[daisee]

I recently posted on the Op Room site regarding a rising incidence of neck/shoulder injuries in our theatre unit that now has six people out on 'special' duties or leave. (Occurring over the past 12 months among scrub/scout female staff, new and experienced, 30 - 40 y age group.) No one specific incident can be pinpointed. So far the replys come from general ward areas grappling with individual large patients or unwieldy devices. This, however, for us is a new phenomenon, and I wonder if anyone else out there has noticed the same occurring in a reasonably conscientious unit. I am considering the new lifing techniques - the hovermats and slippery slide sheets we use for patient transfer - and the pulling on the handles of heavy metal instrument trays to place on setups or shelves etc. Anyone else think of any recent innovations that might alter our patterns of injury?

[blue heron]

I recently posted on the Op Room site regarding a rising incidence of neck/shoulder injuries in our theatre unit that now has six people out on 'special' duties or leave. (Occurring over the past 12 months among scrub/scout female staff, new and experienced, 30 - 40 y age group.) No one specific incident can be pinpointed. So far the replys come from general ward areas grappling with individual large patients or unwieldy devices. This, however, for us is a new phenomenon, and I wonder if anyone else out there has noticed the same occurring in a reasonably conscientious unit. I am considering the new lifing techniques - the hovermats and slippery slide sheets we use for patient transfer - and the pulling on the handles of heavy metal instrument trays to place on setups or shelves etc. Anyone else think of any recent innovations that might alter our patterns of injury?

Do you have th option of having an ocupational therapist, or someone with similar training to observe for a day and see what they see? Are the injuries repetitive motion injuries? Would a stretching program help?

Where my son works, there was a very high incidence of certain injuries, and an education program was started with stretch breaks 3 or 4 times a day. The incidence dropped dramatically.