Office workers urged to act on back pain

Just occasionally back pain is explained by an identified pathology, yet our reaction to all back pain is "as if" pain was a sign of pathology. Physical Ergonomic interventions are based on this idea. Risk assessments are based on this idea.

It is the wrong model.

Interestingly Nigel identifies parts of the accurate model. The emphasis on psychosocial factors is correct if incomplete. However, the research doesn't yet show how to make a psychosocial intervention. Psychosocial risk assessments don't work either (they fail for different reasons in different cultures too!).

I do not believe that Brussels can dream up a worthwhile Directive on MSD until they have properly and thoroughly discarded the pathology model they like.

Yup, far too few smiles out there in general and I suspect even I lost my sense of humour sometime ago just hanging onto my sense of my rediculusnessness for sanities sake. Anyway, as you must know already "Fatigue" by comparison with the affects of alcohol manifests in a significantly higher risk of loss of attention or vigilance relative to even that presented in those under the drink drive limit.

Common work related stressors and poor climate tend to result in increased levels of performance anxiety that will be exacerbated by approval deprivation compounding the symptoms of fatigue, psychosocial & physiological, and well meaning attempts to cope and tolerate or persevere regardless of sleep and eating disorders often self-medicated during the day with use of coffee or other so called energy drinks, smoking etc. and at night by 'just the one' drink in the evening to 'wind-down' before spending even more time on-screen playing or social networking before bed - all a bit of a vicious cycle difficult to break once established.

Quality of life, work/life balance and any sense of wellbeing requires a greater degree of self-advocacy let alone legislation to reinforce the promoting of "effectiveness" in the implementation of any occ-health good practice.

Display Screen Equipment is not a harmless, inorganic bit of inanimate workstation kit it is an "office machine" and the user "operator interface" requires optimisation and/or calibration as not all screens are equal and not all operators (58%+) can access data presented on screen with ease that's why it's called "Screen Fatigue".

That's why, over time, the operator experiences symptoms sufficient to be debilitating enough to impair performance by around 20% or 33 days loss of performance / productivity per annum now characterised as ' presenteeism '.

Seated immobility also contributes to the 25,000 people a year suffering a DVT that has the potential to move and turn into a pulminary embolism and that is not just painfull but life threatening !

So wake up and smell the coffeee, oop's sorry no smell the flowers, office workers as like any "machine" operator you are not working in a low risk, safe, hazard free environment as 47% or nearly half will experience an RSI type injury as a "given".

Nigel, you always make me smile! Having read your comments several times I think I agree with most of what you say. I also think that seating is paramount for someone with back pain and the type of chair can make a significant difference to the employee. I spend a fair amount of time assessing people's workstations and most of the time things improve vastly when I introduce the employee to the various mechanisms the chair has. The "Tilt" mechanism is, in my opinion, the most important mechanism as this is the part which will offer more support to the whole back.
Yes, we are responsible to a degree for our own health in the workplace but equally the user should feel confident in altering the chair height, tilt, seat pan etc to accommodate the changing needs of the back pain sufferer. Occupational Health are well placed to give advice on equipment and any reasonable adjustments which may be necessary to help the employee remain at work.

Chris & Rita, respectively - 'there sure are plenty' and 'bottle glass - glass bottle' question of psychosocial or physiological presentation of ill-health whichever comes first as adaptive exhaustion follows manifestation of work/life stress and strain.

Tis all about "chain of causation", over time, in the workplace especially the office environment where captivity, increased levels of seated immobility and "fatigue" sat in front of the universal generic display screen takes it's toll..........

In fact the answer is in the subject line "office workers urged to act on back pain" as currently other than just completing a "workstation" risk assessment, DSE Regs 1992, there are currently no "screen risk" assessments offering an "effective" and "reasonably practicable" mitigation or prevention of "Screen Fatigue or CVS" (Computer Vision Syndrome) nevertheless, the HSE in association with the EU are developing an MSD Directive due out next year that will, most likely seek to address the issues of "stress & strain" un DSE operation.

In the mean time it will remain the responsibility of the " USER " operator i.e. YOU to ensure that YOU take sufficient "visual & physical breaks" off screen and off task / workstation to reduce YOUR risk of fatigue and resultant loss of capacity to sustain YOUR visual acuity and correct posture throughout YOUR working day - simple'sss

This is where Occupational Health is invaluable to companies. Back pain is one of the major causes of sickness absence (I seem to recall it is second only to mental health issues but I am happy to be corrected if this is not the case) and early intervention by OH can mean a quicker return to work and potentially can also reduce the incidence of sickness absence.
Access to physiotherapy is also an advantage but I know that there are considerable waiting lists for this at GP surgeries.
While I appreciate that small companies may not have their own OH department, in my view it would be worth accessing an external OH provider to advise your staff members on how to manage their back pain and can look at the work area to offer reasonable adjustments.

excellent piece i currently have 2 staff off work with back problems are there any companies out there that will come and assess the work place and make recommendations to cut down on my staff sickness