NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Welcome by Guy Fragala, Director Environmental Health & Safety University of Massachusetts Medical Center
MR. FRAGALA: Welcome this afternoon to today's session on health care. I would like to say good afternoon to you all.
IN UNISON: Good afternoon.
MR. FRAGALA: See, we're trying to get some interaction going. Let me try that again. Good afternoon all.
IN UNISON: Good afternoon!
MR. FRAGALA: That's a little better. So I'm very enthusiastic and pleased to have a chance to come here today to really speak on a problem that's been with us for a long time. That is the occupational injury problem within the health care industry. I've been interested in this in for a while, and I'd like to tell you about a presentation I did in one of my earlier career endeavors. I was giving a presentation on health care ergonomics to an audience of one, and that's the good news.
When I got done my presentation and was leaving, the person in the audience said, "You can't go." And I said, "Well, why not?" And they told me they were the other presenter on the program.
So we were very pleased today to see that we had a good representation from health care. Also, I'm very pleased to see that ergonomics is receiving a lot of attention, because now my mother finally knows what I do. She used to think I was in economics.
Now, when I go down and visit her in Florida, people around the pool don't ask me for financial advice any more. Okay. Now, to get to the problem that we want to discuss and that is ergonomics and health care and the occupational injury problem we have. In case anyone hasn't noticed, the health care industry is one of the leaders with regard to occupational injuries. And the majority of these injuries involve musculoskeletal problems many from patient handling tasks which will be a focus of our presentations today.
We've tried for many years to put in place certain intervention efforts. Many of these have focused on training programs and teaching people how to lift. But these really haven't shown a lot of success in reducing the magnitude of the problem. So I think we need to go further. And I think the time is right. Today, we have interest from management, from labor, from insurance carriers and from regulators to really address a serious problem, that is the musculoskeletal problem within the health care industry. And ergonomics can offer a real good direction for improvement. And I hope we're able to give you folks some good ideas.
