A FIVE STEP PROCESS FOR FINDING WMSDs IN THE WORKPLACE



A FIVE STEP PROCESS FOR FINDING WMSDs IN THE WORKPLACE
Work related Musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are occupational injuries that affect connective tissues such as muscles, nerves, blood vessels, tendons, ligaments, and joints. Examples of WMSDs are Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Low Back pain, Tendinitis, Tennis elbow. This disorder is due to some jobs which include tasks that can produce injuries from Lifting, awkward postures, forceful gripping, repetitive motions and hand-arm vibration.
 The five step process for detecting WMSDs are:                                                                                      (1) Identify jobs that may have hazards.
(2) Educate employees and also get them involved.                                                                                     (3) Evaluate jobs for hazards.                                                                                          
(4) Identify and implement solutions                                                                                                            (5) Re-evaluate to ensure solutions are effective.                                                                                                      
(1) IDENTIFY JOBS THAT MAY HAVE HAZARDS.                                                                     The first step entails identifying jobs with injuries, bottlenecks, quality problems, employer/supervisor concerns.                                                                                                                                                  
(2) EDUCATE EMPLOYEES AND ALSO GET THEM INVOLVED.                                          One way of educating the employees in your workplace is to give them basic awareness of ergonomic principles. It is also vital that employees be allowed to participate in finding and implementing solutions to hazards in their jobs. They are the most knowledgeable persons about their jobs.                                                                                                                                                            (3) EVALUATE JOBS FOR HAZARDS.                                                                                               This can be done using tools such as checklists, employee interviews, photographs or videos , minutes from the safety committee meetings, claims history. You can ask employees in your company the following questions:  (a) How long does this job take? (b) Why do you do this job this way? (c) Do you get tired or usually feel any discomfort? (d) Any ideas of ways to do it better? 
Questions that you can ask supervisors include: (a) Are there jobs that people do not like to do? (b) Any symptoms of injury? (c) Any bottlenecks or quality problems? The use of photos and videotapes in evaluating WMSDs helps one to get a pictorial view of what the job tasks entail.                                    
 (4) IDENTIFY AND IMPLEMENT SOLUTIONS.                                                                          The solution tools that can be used are catalogs, ergonomics ideas bank etc. You can also create tools in-house.                                                                                                                                                   (5) RE-EVALUATE TO SEE IF SOULTIONS ARE EFFECTIVE.                                             Ensure that you use checklists and other tools to make sure you eliminated the hazards. Make sure that you did not create new hazards. Ask employees if they feel better or notice positive differences. Review your ergonomics activities once in a year.
Till I come your way again, this is Goke Akingbade ( your Safety guide). Do have a great week ahead.
Regards
gokeakingbade2@gmail.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Job hazard Analysis

Image
Job Hazard Analysis Hello there, welcome to December. This is Goke Akingbade ( your Safety Guide) here with another interesting topic to dwell on. We will discussing about a very important aspect on occupational health and safety. If the operational activities of your organization put your employees at risk or exposed them to hazardous Job tasks, then you need to conduct Risk assessment of the work. One Risk assessment tool is a Job Hazard Analysis. A job hazard analysis is a risk assessment tool that screens job tasks by breaking the work into key steps, identify potential hazards and prefer safe work procedures to control risk that is associated with the inherent hazards. Any non routine work that poses high risk, any task that can lead to worker injury or illness, any hot work task need a job hazard analysis to be conducted before embarking on it. You can get information about such job task from your accident reports and workers compensation claims. Any job task that has the
Read more

SAFE LIFTING

SAFE LIFTING Welcome, this is Goke Akingbade(your Safety Guide). Today we will be discussing about how to lift heavy objects safely or what is known as Back safety. Firstly , we need to get to know about our backs. KNOWING ABOUT YOUR BACK .                                                                                                                                               Your back is made up of vertebrae, discs, nerves and muscles. Vertebrae refers to small bones joined together to make up the spinal cord. The basic functions of the spine are:                                                                                                              (1).Providing support.                                                                                                                                                (2).Protecting the spinal cord.                                                                                                                              
Read more

HAZARD AND HOW IT AFFECTS YOU

HAZARD AND HOW IT AFFECTS YOU. Hello friend, I want to first of all congratulate you on your successful entry into February. We will be going through something that is very relevant to your work and even your surrounding. WHAT IS A HAZARD? This is anything that has the potential of causing human injury or illness. It could be an object say a knife or scissors,stapler for instance.It could also be the state of mind of a worker if he is being distracted while at work and not giving his or her best on the job or an unsafe condition that has been put in place by someone. Another example is say for instance, you spill oil while working in the kitchen and because you are in a hurry, you leave it and you don't clean it up. Anybody that enters into that environment could slip and fall down and sustain some injury.  It is very important for you to be able to identify potential hazards in your surroundings especially where you work because that is where you spend most of your time
Read more