Ergonomics in Healthcare

Date: June 16, 2022

Time: 9:00AM PT

Speaker: Kristan Rossetto, R.Kin, HB.Sc.HK, GradCert.ESLM, AE

Working in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and other healthcare environments can place high physical demands on workers and often requires manual handling, forceful exertions, and awkward postures, typically over the course of a 12-hour shift. The presence and combination of these musculoskeletal disorder hazards contributes to the risk of injury.

There are several ergonomic initiatives that healthcare organizations can consider to reduce employee injury risk. This webinar will outline some successful ergonomics and injury prevention strategies that can impact the overall wellbeing of healthcare workers, including:

‘ The importance of outlining policies and processes for handling ergonomic concerns
‘ Identification of ergonomic hazards in all jobs, as part of proactive screening
‘ Education on proper work set up and techniques for all types of jobs
‘ The importance of safe patient handling programs ‘ how ergonomics plays a critical role
‘ Tackling easier to fix ergonomic issues, such as proper computer set up, to reduce overall injury risk

Upon request, ERGO Inc. will provide Ergonomics Toolkit Cards to participants to help with Ergonomics in your workplace.

Kristan Rossetto is an Associate Ergonomist (AE) and a Registered Kinesiologist with an Honours Bachelor of Science in Human Kinetics and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Exercise Science and Lifestyle Management. Kristan has over 5 years of workplace ergonomic and clinical exercise experience in various settings, including manufacturing, automotive, food preparation, warehouse, retail, correctional facilities, and healthcare.

As an Ergonomic Consultant, Kristan has developed and delivered customized ergonomic training workshops, including ergonomic best practices and safe handling for a Distillery, e-learning and safe patient handling for a hospital, a stretching program for a warehouse, and injury prevention strategies and proper computer workstation set-up for office workers. Kristan helped to design and administers post-offer pre-employment testing for various industries, including healthcare and manufacturing.

Kristan is experienced at conducting physical and cognitive job demands analysis, ergonomic risk assessments, and job suitability assessments to provide employers with comprehensive information about the functional and physical requirements of a job to prevent workplace injuries and for the effective return to work of employees. She has assisted with control room design for correctional facilities and patient intake for hospitals.