Ergonomics
HELP! My {wrist/thumb/arm/neck/back...} hurts!
The UW Department of Environmental Health and Safety has a web site at http://www.ehs.washington.edu/ohsergo/ with some useful information.
General Advice
While it's difficult to offer much in the way of general advice -- and we are certainly not trained professionals in this area -- here are a few tips (many shamelessly stolen from a nice page of RSI Information that Cassidy Curtis put together while he was teaching 458 a few years back) ...
- Act quickly. If you are experiencing any pain that seems to be related to working at a desk or computer, you should immediately seek advice from your doctor or a professional trained in diagnosing and treating these types of problems. The sooner you correct any problems, the better chance you'll have of avoiding serious injury. It's very hard to come back, once you've pushed yourself too far.
- Maintain good posture. Consult the references below for pictures and descriptions of good typing posture.
- Stretch and exercise your fingers, wrists, arms, shoulders, and back. Do this as often as humanly possible. Again, see the references for exercises and stretches to try.
- Take frequent breaks. Every five minutes, look away from the screen, take your hands off the keyboard, and stretch or just relax for a moment. Every twenty minutes or so, get up and walk around.
- Don't work through pain. If you do something that causes pain, just stop what you're doing, and don't start again until the pain is gone. If this happens so often that you are not getting your work done, take time off and go see a doctor immediately. Pain is one of the later signs of RSI, which means that some damage has already been done.
- Waste no effort. It's amazing how much energy you can spend scrolling up and down to read a document. Be creative-- try to minimize the amount of typing and mousing you need to do to accomplish a task. You could even print out a hard copy and read that instead.
- Reduce stress. RSI is all about having too much strain on a particular muscle or tendon. Reducing your overall stress level can literally reduce the strain on every part of your body.
- Be patient. RSI is usually the result of years of constant abuse, and it does not go away overnight. It can take many months to recover from such damage. Be persistent, and give your treatment time to work.
- Educate yourself about this very complex topic. This is probably the most important thing you can do. The EH&S class is a good place to start. The web is also a tremendous source of information on the topic.
Starting Your Quest for Relief
- Typing Injury FAQ Home Page
http://www.tifaq.com/
A great clearinghouse, with lots of pointers to other good sites. The following are a few selected links from that site. - Office Ergonomics
http://www.tifaq.org/ergonomics/office.html
This portion of the Typing Injury FAQ site is a good place to start. - "Conventional Wisdom vs Current Ergonomics" by Chris Grant, PhD, CPE
http://office-ergo.com/current-ergo-thinking/#wisdom
Summarizes some of the new research in office ergonomics, and offers some good tips. - IBM - Healthy Computing
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/healthycomputing/
IBM's Healthy Computing site includes valuable information on how to organize your workspace effectively as well as providing some more in-depth human factors research papers. - Local RSI Information
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/458/00wi/info/rsi.html
Cassidy Curtis' page on RSI Information, including his experiences with various types of hardware solutions, and additional links to other resources.
- There are, of course, many, many resources available on the web. Here are just a few to get you started...
Simple Steps
There are number of very simple things you can do to adjust your environment. But be very careful about opting for fancy hardware; some may be helpful, but many devices can be very harmful.
- Use a wrist rest. Your wrists should "drape" slightly, not bend upwards.
- Remember to take frequent breaks; stretch; take a short walk.
Please don't delay! These problems are MUCH easier to deal with early!
Last changed Mon, 2012-04-02 09:50
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