Page 46 - OHS, FebruaryMarch 2023

EMPLOYEE HEALTH SCREENING Reducing Injuries and Increasing Productivity with Onsite Athletic Trainers Athletic trainers can work with onsite nurses to create a stronger and healthier workplace.SG BY LEIF ANDERSON AND PAUL GOREN At many of today’s manufacturing and industrial sites, workplace injuries continue to be a problem for both employers and employees alike. Onsite nursing programs and reactive treatments no doubt lead to better outcomes and improved recovery times. Yet restricting workplace healthcare to only onsite nursing is solving just one part of the equation. Injuries continue to occur, and many workers still go home sore and achy more often than they’d like. After decades of letting preventable injuries and poor ergonomic mechanics reduce the productivity of a workplace, integrating athletic trainers into an existing onsite healthcare program is one of the solutions to reducing and preventing injuries, enhancing workers’ overall health and recovery and improving outcomes. Treating Workers Like Professional Athletes Make no mistake, workers in construction, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing sites are no different than your favorite athletes. Think about a worker on a construction site. The site is their playing field, constructing a world-class building is their sport, and using heavy-duty tools and machinery is their position. Like professional or college athletes, today’s workers require supremely high levels of skill, focus, strength and flexibility. And like an NFL team that sees its starting quarterback pull a hamstring and is left without its star, if a construction worker pulls a hamstring, it also means a key player is out with time away from work, resulting in a less productive worksite. Often, the tasks that construction and manufacturing workers are responsible for demand just as much—and sometimes more— physical strain as what professional athletes do on the court or the field. As such, workers in these high-intensity industries require the same level of physical preparation to ensure they can do their jobs safely and protect themselves and their colleagues. Baseline Health and Fitness Assessments Before onsite athletic trainers can start to deliver results, the very best programs begin with health and fitness assessments and worksite evaluations. Beginning with employee health screenings helps create a baseline health level from which athletic trainers can examine progress. There are a variety of screenings employers can introduce, including biometric screenings such as body mass index, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol checks. Stretching and endurance exams also help trainers evaluate where issues may lie so they can create a customized program for improvement. To help reduce musculoskeletal injuries, onsite athletic Like professional or college athletes, today’s workers require supremely high levels of skill, focus, strength and flexibility. trainers can examine an individual’s ergonomics and provide behavior-based coaching and proper body movement techniques to ensure workers are using their muscles correctly. Athletic trainers can conduct functional movement screenings to assess the body mechanics of each employee on a site to see how their body moves, uncover any imbalances and provide instruction and exercises to correct form for optimal performance. By using the proper movements when completing tasks—think “lift with your legs, not your back,” but much more detailed—is proven to prevent strains, sprains and tears. Additionally, athletic trainers can evaluate workstations, suggest ways to redesign them for better functionality and recommend different tools that might benefit employees who complete repetitive tasks. Preventing Injuries and Managing Long-term Treatment with Athletic Trainers Today, injury prevention is arguably the most important part of any occupational healthcare program. It improves employee health and wellness, reduces time away from work and boosts productivity. Athletic trainers play a key role in reducing injuries, incident rate, the severity of injuries and the number of OSHA recordable incidents at these sites. Specifically, they provide preventive care that improves employee health and wellness while preventing injuries like strains, sprains and tears—the most common non-fatal workplace injuries resulting in days away from work in 2020, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.1 Integrating a modern athletic training program in collaboration with a nursing program means introducing pre- shift stretching programs that are tailored to the jobsite and function, with specific attention paid to body parts that are used the most while completing tasks. If there appears to be a common injury at one jobsite, athletic trainers will devise pre- shift stretches that address the problem head-on. Interestingly, 46 Occupational Health & Safety | FEBRUARY/MARCH 2023 www.ohsonline.com