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Repetitive strain injury (RSI)
Repetitive strain injuries affect hundreds of thousands of workers every year in Britain.
RSI covers a wide range of injuries to muscles, tendons and nerves. Usually hands, wrists, elbows or shoulders are affected. Knees and feet can also suffer, especially if a job involves a lot of kneeling or operating foot pedals on equipment.
The more common workplace strain injuries are sometimes called Work Related Upper Limb Disorders or WRULDS. This can lead to permanent disabilities, so must be stopped at an early stage.
There are many different names for these conditions, including:
Tenosynovitis; carpall tunnel syndrome; tendinitis; dupuytren’s
contracture; epicondylitis or ‘tennis or golf elbow’; Bursitis;
‘Housemaid’s knee’ or ‘beat conditions’, and overuse injury.
To
prevent strains, however, requires an acknowledgement that workers are not
there to provide the flexibility in the system, through contorting and
stressing their bodies and brains to cope with poorly designed equipment
or systems of work, or through increasing their work rate to accommodate
production demands, or because the workforce is too stretched, too cowed
or too insecure to complain.
Links
TUC guide: Identifying potential RSI risks in the workplace
UNISON; Information sheet on RSI
Worksmart RSI FAQs and resources
International RSI Day 28 February each year
The most recent documents available on this subject are:
Kids and workers
need keyboard skills
The TUC is calling on the government
to help stop the epidemic of workplace repetitive strain injury (RSI) by
introducing typing and keyboard skills into schools.
PDF
version available for download
2 March 2007
Most strain injuries
made on the shopfloor
Factory workers rather than managers
are most at risk from repetitive strain injury (RSI), the Chartered
Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) has warned.
PDF
version available for download
2 March 2007
Children should
learn typing at school to help stop RSI epidemic, says
TUC
To mark RSI Awareness Day today (Wednesday), the TUC
is calling on the Government to help stop the epidemic of the condition
that affects tens of thousands of workers across the UK by introducing
typing and keyboard skills into schools.
28 February 2007
Editor wins £37,500
RSI damages
A Guardian newspaper night editor who says she
was refused access to the company physiotherapist after developing
crippling elbow pain has been paid £37,500 in damages for RSI.
PDF
version available for download
26 May 2006
New physios face
strains peril
New physiotherapists are at an increased
risk of musculoskeletal disorders, according to the “largest ever” health
and safety survey by their union, CSP.
PDF
version available for download
7 October 2005
RSI a major pain for
workers and bosses, say physios
The number of employees
suffering from potentially debilitating work-related upper limb disorders
is on the increase, physios' union CSP has warned.
PDF
version available for download
16 September 2005
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