Transcription:
Ortho Rehab: Biomechanics/Ergonomics

Melanie Cole (Host): Repetitive strain injuries can slow you down. They can limit your ability to perform everyday tasks, but sometimes small adjustments to how you perform a certain task can help prevent these injuries. My guest is Rebecca Bibb, she’s an orthopedic certified specialist at Palmdale Regional Medical Center. Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us. What a great topic. So many people get aches and pains from things they do every single day. Tell us what types of conditions you are mainly seeing in the orthopedic rehab department program at Palmdale Regional Medical Center?

Rebecca Bibb (Guest): Well in our physical therapy setting, we see a variety of different diagnoses. Typically anything from chronic pain, your simple injuries that occurred while you were moving someone this weekend. We see people who are postoperative who’ve had surgery as well as a variety of neurological diagnoses such as Parkinson’s patients and stroke or traumatic brain injuries and we also treat things from a pelvic floor dysfunction, lymphedema, carpal tunnel, those kinds of things as well.

Host: What an interesting field that you’re in. So who can use your services? Because we’re going to talk about what those services are, but who comes to you? What kinds of patients do you have?

Rebecca: We will see a variety of different patients, anywhere from teenage, younger children, your teenagers, younger adults, and then all the way up to you know your seniors who need assistance as well. We see a variety of different patients here.

Host: I’m sure you do. So let’s talk about some of the services, and as I mentioned, repetitive strain injuries, biomechanics, people hear that term, they really don’t know what it means, but you see a lot of biomechanical issues, right? Tell us what that means.

Rebecca: So biomechanics is just a fancy way for how the body moves, how it performs in different tasks, from anything as simple as lifting a box from the floor to how your body – you stand when you’re cleaning or doing vacuuming tasks at home to an athlete, someone’s who’s trying to kick a soccer ball to a pitcher – biomechanics is seen in everyday tasks and activities and it actually has a big effect on those repetitive strain injuries. Oftentimes what happens is we have small weaknesses or our body likes to favor certain positions a lot, and the body adjusts to it, and over time if it’s not working in favor of that joint, or in favor of the muscles that are there, it can cause a strain injury, especially if you’re doing it on a regular basis, and so what we do is we try to do a functional analysis of that particular movement, or if it’s someone who’s working at a desk, we look and see how you’re sitting at a desk and try and find ways to reduce the strain on that body area and help you to improve how your body moves, that’s what we do as physical therapy individuals.

Host: Well I appreciate the fact that you just mentioned sitting at the desk because workplace ergonomics and workplace injuries can be everything from mouse elbow to postural issues, back problems, all of these things. Tell us what you want us to know about that really good position that we should – because this will help a lot of people Rebecca, give us your best positioning if we are sitting at a desk so we don’t get those problems.

Rebecca: Oh absolutely because the majority of the workforce, we are sitting at a desk most of the day, myself included when I have to do charts. So the biggest thing is to make sure you’re sitting relatively close to your desk, that you’re not sitting very far away, and also not sitting too close to where you’re pressing up against the desk and being uncomfortable. When it comes to your chair, you want to make sure that your feet are flat on the floor. That’s a big one. I’m short, I’m only 5 foot 2 inches, so most of the time my feet, I sit at the ones and my feet don’t touch the floor, and so I have to make sure I adjust it so that way my feet are flat. The other additional thing for that is, you want to make sure you’re sitting all the way back in your chair, so your back is up against the rest. This prevents you from having to use those back muscles constantly to hold yourself up by sitting on the edge of your chair, which is something that I tend to do because I’m constantly up and down, so it’s important to take the time during the day to make those adjustments for your chair. When it comes to your computer monitor or your keyboard, the computer monitor should be about your fingertips length away. You also want to make sure that you’re sitting square on with the computer monitor, that you’re not constantly having to look in one direction or the other to face your monitor. The other thing with the keyboard is you want it to be level with your hand, as if your elbow is slightly bent at about a 90 degree angle. That reduces the strain on the elbow and you also want your hand and wrist to be in a relatively neutral position, not keep that super high to where it’s bending a lot and not bending down a lot to reach something, like on one of those drop down keyboard shelves that a lot of people have. And then the other thing – the big thing too is making sure that when you’re sitting at your desk everything is place equally from side to side, like I mentioned earlier. You don’t want to be turning in one direction a lot during the day because otherwise that’ll typically be the side of your body that some sort of repetitive strain injury will take place on. So you want to make sure that your phone is maybe on one side and your printer is on the other side, and that when you’re talking to someone you’re facing them square on, not having to twist your body to face them when doing so. These are just simple things that you can change and it’s something you do every day so that way if you make those small changes, you’re trying – you’ll best prevent these repetitive strain injuries from occurring.

Host: Wow Rebecca that was awesome. What a great usable description that was. While you were speaking, I was repositioning myself, and I think that that is exactly what we need to hear right now. What great advice that was, and you know with a mouse, when you mentioned the mouse, if it’s turned so that your hand is pronated in, I’ve realized that in myself and I got a mouse that made my wrist more natural and my pain in my shoulder and elbow went away, so listeners what she’s saying really does make a big difference. Tell us a little bit about your program, some of the special things that you and your team do to go above and beyond for your patients.

Rebecca: One of the big things that our clinic offers more so than a lot of other clinics in the area is we do have the ability to treat one on one with our patients for at least half of the treatment session. That allows us to really engage with the patient, get to know them well, and be able to find these little things throughout the day where they say actually now that you mention it I do this every day or it hurts when I do this, and it helps us to get to know them better because we only see you for a small portion of your daily life or even weekly life for that matter, so if we can get an insight by having that one on one treatment, it helps to make our treatments more personal and more effective. On top of that, our clinics, like I mentioned, provides a number of different services. We are also – we have a very large clinic I like to say compared to some of the other ones that I’ve been in with relatively new equipment, and I think the biggest thing is we all come from different backgrounds of physical therapy schools, different certifications, but we try to work together as a team to make sure that everyone is treated equally and is receiving the type of care that they need in order to progress and return to their regular lifestyle again. If we find that someone would be better treated by a hand specialist because they have carpal tunnel treatments, we have hand specialists here in our occupational therapy department. If we notice someone who has had a stroke in the past is having trouble with speaking or stuttering, completing full sentences, we have a speech language pathologist on hand who can perform an evaluation. All those kinds of things that helps to have a good working team and we all care deeply for our patients here at Palmdale.

Host: Well I can certainly hear the pride and the passion in your voice Rebecca, is this only through referral? How can patients see you at the clinic?

Rebecca: Yes, because we’re based out of a hospital, our treatment basis is for referrals only. So you have to have a doctor’s prescription to send you over so that way we can evaluate you further. But like I said, anyone can see their doctor, whether it’s your primary, a specialist and inquire about these kinds of things, especially if it is something you do on a regular basis or it’s a chronic pain that you’ve been having for a while, and then that way once you have the prescription in hand, then we can see you here and perform some treatments for you.

Host: What great information. Wrap it up. Give us some more of your really good advice about the importance of ergonomics, repetitive strain injuries so that we don’t get them and what you can do for us at Palmdale Regional Medical Center.

Rebecca: Sure, one of the biggest things that I would recommend to the listeners is researching online just a workstation ergonomic picture so that way you can get an idea of what I was describing earlier of how we should look while we’re sitting at our desk. Most places have great pictures of how we should be aligned while we’re sitting, but repetitive strain injury like I said, it can go from not just workplace injuries, but it can also be applied to things at home or to athletes. You know with athletes they’re putting a lot of strain on their body. Their muscles are very strong, but sometimes there are those muscles, small groups albeit, that aren’t utilized as well, and so we’ll watch an athlete perform a soccer kick or have them do a golf swing and see okay this area of their body is tight, this area of their body is weak and we need to strengthen it or loosen it up so that way they can perform better on and off the playing field. Your stay at home mom who comes in with back pain and it turns out they have a 2-year-old that they’re carrying on one side all the time and so it’s one of the contributing factors to having that back pain, so we try and find ways to help you in all different areas of your daily life when it comes to body mechanics and ergonomics so that way you can get back to feeling like your normal self as quickly as we can.

Host: What a great segment, such great information. Rebecca, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your incredible expertise about the services that you offer and some really, really usable information that people can take home right now and set up their workstations whether it’s your home work or work-work and set it up so that you are in that good biomechanical position. Thank you again, and that wraps up another episode of Palmdale Regional Radio with Palmdale Regional Medical Center. Head on over to our website at palmdaleregional.com for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast as cool as I did, please share it with your friends, with your family, with your coworkers on social media and be sure to check out more topics of interest for you at our library. Physicians are independent practioners who are not employees or agents of Palmdale Regional Medical Center. The hospital shall not be liable for actions or treatments provided by physicians. I’m Melanie Cole.