Workplace safety: Body mechanics

As a nursing assistant, your job involves a great deal of physical activity, like carrying and transferring clients and objects, which might cause an injury to your muscles, bones, and joints.

This is called work-related musculoskeletal disorder, and the injuries may occur gradually over time or may happen all at once without warning.

Alright, the most commonly injured parts of the body are the back, neck, shoulders, and arms. In fact, back injuries are the most common and most concerning!

Symptoms include decreased range of motion, limited mobility, and pain when standing up or changing positions. Also, you may feel numbness or tingling in your thighs or legs, which indicates a nerve injury.Alright, there are several factors that increase your risk of having a musculoskeletal injury, such as sitting or standing in one position for a long time and assuming a poor posture, like bending or squatting frequently.

Also, your risk of injury increases if you stretch your body to reach far objects above your shoulders, carry objects when you are feeling tired and fatigued or objects that are too heavy, and twist or bend your body when carrying an object.

Walking on a slippery floor and working in narrow spaces, like hallways and bathrooms, can be risky as well. Now, there are certain client caring activities that can put you at a higher risk for musculoskeletal injury.

These include, transferring clients who are totally dependent on others for movement, transferring combative clients, or transferring clients from bed to the chair or vice versa.

Also, you may get an injury when changing a client’s position on a bed or chair, if you bend while making their bed or when you are bathing or weighing them, or when trying to stop a client from falling down.

Now, to understand the reason why work-related injuries occur, we can look at the principles of ergonomics. “Ergo” means work and “nomics” means “study of,” so ergonomics means the study of work.

These principles focus on the workplace environment, equipment, and the way the task is performed. Now, the three factors in the workplace that increase your risk of injury are force, repetition, and awkward postures.

So, the more force you exert to perform a task, like transferring a heavy client, the more stress you place on your muscles, which increases the risk of injury.

Also, when you perform a task repeatedly for too long, like when crushing medications for clients, you will be using the same joints and muscles over and over, and this makes them susceptible to fatigue and injury.

Finally, awkward postures, like bending, twisting, kneeling, squatting, and reaching for overhead objects can place an extra stress on your body.Now, body mechanics means how the different parts of your musculoskeletal system work together to move and maintain balance and posture.

Understanding the mechanics of your body allows you to use it more efficiently and safely in performing your tasks and, thus, helps you avoid injuries.

So, there are three main principles of body mechanics, which are alignment, balance, and coordination. Alignment basically means a good posture, and that’s when your spine is in a neutral position, and a straight line can be drawn from your ears to your shoulders and to your hips when you’re standing or sitting.

This reduces the amount of stress on your body. Next is balance.

When you’re standing, your feet are the base of your support, and your center of gravity is your torso, which is the heaviest part of your body.

To have a good balance, make your base of support wider by spreading your feet apart or by placing one foot in front of the other.

Also, you can increase your balance by bringing your center of gravity, or your torso, closer to your base of support by bending your knees.

Now, the last principle of body mechanics is coordination, which means using the strongest muscles in your body to perform tasks, like those of your shoulders, hips, and thighs and, at the same time, maintaining balance and alignment.

Now, here are a few body mechanic techniques that you can use to minimize the risk of musculoskeletal injuries. If you want to lift an object, like a client, first spread your feet apart, bend your knees but not the waist, and make sure your back is aligned with your head and hips.

Tighten the strong muscles of your shoulder, hips, and thighs; use them to lift the object; and don’t rely on your back.

Bring the object closer to your torso, which is your center of gravity, and to your base of support, which is your feet.

Avoid lifting objects higher than your chest level. Other things you can do to avoid injury include not carrying objects that are too heavy; instead, try pulling or pushing it when possible.

Another option is using equipment like a draw sheet, hand cart, or mechanical lift if they’re available. Ask for help from others if you want to carry a heavy client or other objects.

Also, avoid twisting, bending your back, and stretching your body to reach for far objects. Finally, avoid unnecessary reaching; for example, when working at a client’s bedside table, raise it to the level of your waist and do not lean over the client when you need to get something.

All right, as a quick recap… As a nursing assistant, your job involves a great deal of physical activity that could put you at risk for work-related musculoskeletal disorder.

The risk of injury at work depends on three ergonomic, or work-related, factors, which are the amount of force you need to perform your task; repetition, meaning how often you perform it; and the posture you assume to perform it.

Awkward postures, such as bending, kneeling and twisting, increase your risk of injury. To avoid musculoskeletal injuries, you should learn how to use proper body mechanics, such as alignment, balance, and coordination, whenever you perform a