Employer Info

What are ergonomics?

Ergonomics is the study and practice of improving the way people move and function within their daily life. Emphasis is placed on maximizing efficiency and safety through the use of certain tools or body mechanic strategies, and identifying how certain factors may be contributing to injury. The term ergonomics comes from the Greek language and roughly translates to “fitting a job to the person.”

Physical therapists are trained in ergonomics teaching as a means to help people with injury prevention and resolution. Both the tools used in your home or workplace (everything from your chair to your car to your computer to industry-specific machinery), as well as the way you use these tools are subject to study and modification. Your physical therapist can determine if these tools and your workplace requirements or home responsibilities are physically suited to you, and if not, what can be done about it.

A Functional Capacity Evaluation (FCE) is used by employers to determine an individual’s functional abilities, limitations, work capacity, and in some cases how severe an injury may impact overall work function. This is all done in the context of a safe environment while focusing on productive work tasks.

The FCE service we provide is a valuable tool in assessing an employee’s safe working abilities and/or establishing baseline abilities for disability evaluations. Our FCE correlates a client’s functional abilities to the essential physical demands of their job to determine whether they meet these physical demands.

The consistency of effort and reliability of pain ratings are important elements of our evaluation, which is why over 70 separate criteria throughout the FCE help determine if a client is putting forth a consistent effort and whether their subjective pain ratings are reliable. Additionally, the Functional Capacity Evaluation testing method we use has consistently stood up in a court of law with reliability and validity research to support the testing method.

It is no secret that there are plenty of dangerous professions out there. According to the Bureau of Labor, firefighters, nurses, police officers, and home manufacturers are among the occupational groups that are most likely to be physically hurt at work. Missing time away from work can be both financially and emotionally devastating, so making a speedy recovery is extremely important. Luckily, with the help of an experienced physical therapist and an individualized rehab treatment plan, a full recovery is possible in most cases. In fact, work injuries are often covered under workers’ compensation insurance coverage as well. This means that you don’t have to worry about paying for physical therapy out-of-pocket and can focus your energy on healing instead.

What is a Work Injury?

Anytime that an employee experiences an illness or injury that is work-related, it is defined as a work injury. This type of injury can take place at your physical place of work, while you are on the job or at home while completing work for pay. Even jobs that don’t require a lot of physical activity can pose potential health risks for their employees, For example, sitting for long periods of time can lead to a repetitive injury or lower back problems. That’s why there are a wide variety of injuries that can be considered work-related and if left untreated, they can become more severe over time.

One of the hardest decisions that has to be made when an employee sustains an injury which causes time off work or restricted duty is whether or not they can return to full duty. Typically, the physician must make the decisions surrounding return to work, but seldom has the physician seen the job description or gone to the worksite to observe the job being performed. In addition, the physician does not generally test the patient’s function to the same degree. The physician usually bases the return-to-work decision on the therapist’s progress note, which includes range of motion, manual muscle tests, pain score, and willingness to participate in therapy. Alternatively, decisions are influenced some by imaging studies or x-rays. These measurements, although important, do not necessarily correlate to functional tasks. Without information about the patient’s work-related functional abilities and the functional demands of the job, the return to work decision can feel like guesswork.

If the employee returns to work too soon, weakness or decreased motion may create another injury to the same or a different body part. If the employee returns to work too late, they will spend unnecessary days out of work and waste valuable dollars in benefits. Physical therapists can play an important role in bridging this gap by providing functional information for the return-to-work process. By providing a comparison of the patient’s functional abilities to the essential physical functions of the job, the return-to-work decision is based on objective data rather than clinical guesswork.