Page 64 - Occupational Health & Safety, July/August 2019

HAND PROTECTION
injuries occur between 8 a.m. and noon (54.6 percent), with a peak happening from 10 to 11 a.m. (Lombardi, 2003). Private organiza- tions that shared their data reported a similar majority of incidents occurring within the first half shifts, upending the common belief that work-weary fatigue is a leading factor.
Instead of drowning in data pools, many safety managers are investigating these injuries on the front lines with the people whose job it is to repair them. Hand surgeons report that the patients they see are split down the middle on being injured at home or at work. It doesn’t tend to discriminate between men and women; the high- er prevalence of male injuries is in direct proportion to the male dominance in manual labor tasks. Those who work in heavy indus- try tend to have more high-severity injuries, with woodwork, con- struction, metalwork, food handling, and textile workers most commonly affected (Rosberg 2013).
Why Do Hand Injuries Happen?
While safety managers devote their day to preventing injuries from occurring through engineering and administrative controls, those who work in the medical industry have their hypotheses on the root causes of avoidable hand injuries. Rushing, machine malfunction, and unfamiliar work tasks are common external causes that can lead to incidents. Dr. Tobias Mann, a hand surgeon at ORA Ortho- pedics in Iowa, agrees that distraction and fatigue are leading factors that contribute to severe hand injuries. The internal weight of stress can cause employees to lose focus on even the most basic tasks.
of the time, the fingers are affected, and the palm is nearly twice as likely to be hurt as the dorsal side of the hand (Gyer, 2018).
Most organizations purport that lacerations are the most com- mon type of hand-related incident, but safety professionals who read incident reports in their entirety often find that punctures and avulsions get lumped into the same categories as cuts because of the presence of blood. Of the severe injuries, open fractures ac- count for 27 percent of the injuries. Some of these include amputa- tions, which can range from minor to life altering in scale. In many countries, the most common mechanism of injury was crush and the most common place of occurrence for hand injuries was found to be at the workplace (occupational injuries), implying a greater need for more stringent safety measures for workers (Ghiya, 2017). Mann treats crush injuries to fingertips the most often in his prac- tice, because most minor injuries can be treated without surgery.
Overuse Injuries/Repetitive Motions
When people think of hand injuries, they normally think about acute injuries that occur violently and suddenly. Overuse inju- ries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, can lead to decreased hand strength and numbness. Hand strain can equally impair hand func- tion, and its onset is often spread over time stemming from repeti- tive motions.
The recent fine of Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions in the UK of £500,000 for negligently exposing employees to vibrations has caused many industries to take notice (Warburton, 2018). Atten- tion to the citation by the HSE was not because of the fine itself, which was hefty, but because the duration of time included for the fine spanned nine years. For occupations such as physical therapy that involve repetitive hand motions, thumbs are affected 50 per- cent of the time, while tendon and nerve injuries are 19 percent and 13 percent, respectively (Abdelmoughit, 2017). To reduce the likelihood of onset, Mann recommends taking breaks and rotating duties and even hand positions while performing common tasks. For those seated at keyboards, adjust seating and wrist position to a zero tilt to reduce strain on the hands while typing.
The Road to Recovery
Hand injury recovery times vary, but the objective is always the same, regardless of the treatment plan. Treatment and recovery from hand injury does not rely only on technical skills of a surgeon, but also on aggressive physical therapy and the patient’s compli-
Acute Hand Injuries
Acute injuries are the typical recordable injuries at job sites. These include caught between, pinch point, cut, puncture, bite, burn, and thermal injuries. The prevalence of injuries presented at emergency departments is to the right hand 68 percent of the time; 70 percent
58 Occupational Health & Safety | JULY/AUGUST 2019
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