A records review of ergonomic injuries enables you to figure out what's causing ergonomic injuries at your workplace. Last week, in Part 1 of this series, I discussed how to perform such a review. Now comes the hard part: translating the data into corrective action. Here's how to analyze the data and decide on corrective action. There's also a model form that you can use to help develop and prioritize your plan of action. If you're a SafetyXChange member, you can access the form in Tools.

3 Ways Form Helps

The form is simply a summary of the data from the records review. When you finish the records review, have somebody from the review team complete the summary form. Fill out a summary form for each type of ergonomically-related injury suffered by your workers. Using this form will do three things to help you solve ergonomics problems:

1. Organize Injury Data

Records reviews yield a vast wealth of data on ergonomics injuries. But that data can be unwieldy, voluminous and hard to organize. The form helps you get a handle on the data by sorting it out according to injury type. This facilitates analysis and the identification of causes of injury.

2. Determine Appropriate Corrective Action

Once you identify what's causing an injury, you can decide what to do to correct the problem. Since causes and solutions for particular injuries may vary across different parts of your workplace or operations, you need to get input from all parties affected. The Model Form is an ideal tool for capturing and organizing this input.

3. Establish Priorities

The summary form lays out the key information about injury types. This enables you to compare injury types side-by-side, determine which problems are the most severe and establish priorities for corrective action.

How to Create a Form

SafetyXChange members should get the Model Form from Tools and adapt it for their own organizations. Although you don't have to use it verbatim, you should make sure that, like ours, your Model Form is completed for each ergonomic injury type and lists for each injury type:

Number of Occurrences: It's crucial to know how many instances of each ergonomic injury types you've experienced before taking corrective action.

Departments/Operations Affected: You need to determine where in the workplace different injuries are occurring so you can invest corrective resources most effectively. For example, you might decide to tackle injuries occurring in a vital area of the workplace first even though other types of injuries are happening more often in less key areas of operations.

Victims' Job Titles: You should have a record of which job titles are suffering which kinds of injuries so you can focus your training efforts.

Equipment Involved: List the device, equipment or workstation, if any, involved in each type of injury. This enables you to identify what may be causing problems and needs to be removed or replaced.

Recommended Action: List clear and specific action recommended to correct the problem. Of course, this may have to be a collective decision involving the safety committee, risk manager, affected workers, consultants and others.

Priority Status of Corrective Actions: The last step is prioritizing corrective actions recommended for each type of injury. Explain your decisions. Priority level will be determined by factors such as:

• Frequency of injury;
• Seriousness of injury;
• Number of workers at risk;
• Types of workers or operations at risk; and
• Ease of correction.

HISTORIC MOMENTS IN WORKPLACE SAFETY

A CLASSICAL INJURY

By Catherine Jones

It's believed that German classical pianist Robert Schumann suffered from what we today know as repetitive stress injury, or RSI. Unfortunately, the science of ergonomics was unknown in the nineteenth century. According to one biographer, "It seems that the greatest problem Schumann had was finding a doctor who could understand his injury and needs as a performer."  Schumann tried several unusual treatments including soaking his aching arm in the carcasses of freshly slaughtered animals. Nothing worked.

RSI, alas, wasn't Schumann's only medical problem. In 1856, Schumann entered an asylum suffering from hallucinations - apparently the effects of syphilis. He died later that year at the age of 46.

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