Reducing Injuries and Increasing Productivity with Onsite Athletic Trainers
Athletic trainers can work with onsite nurses to create a stronger and healthier workplace.
- By Paul Goren, Leif Anderson
- Mar 01, 2023
At many of today’s manufacturing and industrial sites, workplace injuries continue to be a problem for both employers and employees alike. Onsite nursing programs and reactive treatments no doubt lead to better outcomes and improved recovery times. Yet restricting workplace healthcare to only onsite nursing is solving just one part of the equation. Injuries continue to occur, and many workers still go home sore and achy more often than they’d like.
After decades of letting preventable injuries and poor ergonomic mechanics reduce the productivity of a workplace, integrating athletic trainers into an existing onsite healthcare program is one of the solutions to reducing and preventing injuries, enhancing workers’ overall health and recovery and improving outcomes.
Treating Workers Like Professional Athletes
Make no mistake, workers in construction, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing sites are no different than your favorite athletes. Think about a worker on a construction site. The site is their playing field, constructing a world-class building is their sport, and using heavy-duty tools and machinery is their position. Like professional or college athletes, today’s workers require supremely high levels of skill, focus, strength and flexibility. And like an NFL team that sees its starting quarterback pull a hamstring and is left without its star, if a construction worker pulls a hamstring, it also means a key player is out with time away from work, resulting in a less productive work site.
Often, the tasks that construction and manufacturing workers are responsible for demand just as much—and sometimes more—physical strain as what professional athletes do on the court or the field. As such, workers in these high-intensity industries require the same level of physical preparation to ensure they can do their jobs safely and protect themselves and their colleagues.
Baseline Health and Fitness Assessments
Before onsite athletic trainers can start to deliver results, the very best programs begin with health and fitness assessments and worksite evaluations.
Beginning with employee health screenings helps create a baseline health level from which athletic trainers can examine progress. There are a variety of screenings employers can introduce, including biometric screenings such as body mass index, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol checks. Stretching and endurance exams also help trainers evaluate where issues may lie so they can create a customized program for improvement.
This article originally appeared in the March 1, 2023 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.