Maintaining Musculoskeletal Health

Ensuring good musculoskeletal health is essential to enable safer moving and handling at work.

The following may affect your ability to maintain good musculoskeletal health:

Physical health and wellbeing

Physical health and wellbeing include your height, strength, age, flexibility, pregnancy and menopause, health conditions.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle includes fitness levels, diet, alcohol and smoking, your weight and household income.

Mental health

Mental health includes depression, anxiety, isolation and stress.

Psychosocial factors

Psychosocial factors include your existing beliefs and experiences, your culture, poverty and money worries.

It is common to experience some musculoskeletal and back pain from time to time. You may want to consider some of the following suggestions to manage this:

Diet and exercise

Keep fit, eat a well-balanced diet. Maintain a healthy weight. Balance sufficient rest with continuing normal activities. Sufficient sleep can aid healing. Too much alcohol and smoking can affect your health.

Physical activity

Keep moving – physical activity is one of the best things to do to maintain your health and well-being and to manage episodes of musculoskeletal or back pain. Balance rest and maintaining normal activities. Return to work and to normal activities as soon as you are able. You may need to make some simple adjustments.

Positivity

Stay positive. For most people, musculoskeletal pain and back pain improves without medical help. Most back pain is due to muscular spasm and not due to permanent damage. Staying positive is essential for your recovery.

Seeking Medical Help

Most musculoskeletal pain will improve with the strategies (above). However, you should seek the help of your GP or medical professional:

Following injury or trauma when the pain does not subside
If you can't get comfortable, and your pain continues, especially at night
If you experience numbness or tingling or changes in bladder and bowel function
If you have a fever, feel unwell, or have unexplained weight loss
If you are particularly worried or anxious

Principles of Safer Moving and Handling

When lifting or lowering a load, or when carrying out any moving and handling task, the following principles should be adopted:

Adopt a stable base

Place your feet on either side of the load with one foot slightly in front of the other, pointing the way you want to go. This could help avoid twisting.

Do you feel stable and well balanced?

Keep the load close

Step close to the load, or bring the load close to you. Consider sliding the load towards you before lifting it.

Adopt a relaxed and natural posture

Soften or relax your knees, and maintain the natural curves of your spine as you lean slightly forwards to take hold of the load. If you feel uncomfortable, stop and re-assess.

Ensure a firm grip on the load

If the load has handles, use them. Consider adding a handle or using a strap. A ‘hook grip’ may be less tiring than having the hands flat. You may be able to hug the load close to your body. Loose items in a box may affect its stability.

Stand up smoothly

Ensure you feel stable and comfortable throughout. Keep the load close, push up through your strong leg muscles.

Principles put into practise

T'he image demonstrates the principles of safer moving and handling being adopted

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is a term used to describe the process of identifying hazards and risks that have the potential to cause harm.

There are two types of Risk Assessment:

A formal risk assessment – is completed by a nominated person, giving instructions on how to complete the moving and handling task safely
An informal risk assessment (sometimes called a dynamic risk assessment or on-the-spot risk assessment). This is completed by everyone, every time you carry out a moving and handling task. It often only takes a matter of seconds and is performed ‘on-the-spot’, especially if the situation has changed

There are a number of considerations to make when carrying out a dynamic risk assessment:

What am I moving? (The load)
Can I manage this myself? (The individual handler)
Are there any risks around me? (The environment)
What does it involve? (The task)

Let's now look in more detail at the considerations you need to make when carrying out a dynamic risk assessment.

What am I moving?

Consider the load:

Is it too heavy?
Is it awkward or too big?
Is it unstable?
Is it unpredictable?

Strategies to manage the risk:

Get assistance from someone else
Use a piece of equipment
Leave it where it is
Split the load into smaller amounts

Can I manage this myself?

Consider the individual handler:

Do I have any health issues?
Pregnant
Tired
Unwell, not 100% fit at the moment
Don’t know how to do it/use it
I cannot reach it

Strategies to manage the risk:

Get assistance from someone else
Use a piece of equipment
Leave it where it is

Are there any risks around me?

Consider the environment:

Space constraints
Slippery or uneven floors
Poor lighting
Can I see what I am doing?
Is it too hot or too cold?
Do I need to take the load up or down steps or slopes?

Strategies to manage the risk:

Get assistance from someone else
Use a piece of equipment
Leave it where it is

Does it involve

Consider the task

Excessive stooping or bending
Repetitive twisting
Prolonged stretching
Pushing or pulling over a long distance or in a confined space
Carrying over a long distance
Does it need to be completed urgently?
Does the task need unusual strength?

Strategies to manage the risk:

Get assistance from someone else
use a piece of equipment
Leave it where it is
Change your working height
Take regular micro breaks (a quick stretch or change of position)

Team Handling

Lifting as a team does not mean you can lift lots more weight.

Handling by two or more people may make possible an operation that is beyond the capability of one person, or reduce the risk of injury to a single handler [1].

Things to consider:

Enough space for the handlers to manoeuvre
They should have adequate access to the load
One person should plan and then take charge of the operation, ensuring that the movements are co-ordinated
Good communication between team members
Think about the dignity and safety of everyone
Teams of more than four members are unlikely to work successfully

Session Summary

Key Points

· In health and social care, moving and handling injuries account for 40% of work-related sickness absence

· An employer's responsibility is to avoid moving and handling activities if there is a risk of injury, to assess activities if they cannot be avoided, to reduce the risk of injury to employees as far as reasonably practicable and to review risk assessments regularly

· Employees have a responsibility to identify and report hazardous handling tasks, or defects in equipment, and to ensure their activities don’t put themselves or others at risk

· Maintaining musculoskeletal health is essential to enable safe moving and handling at work and at home

· Risk assessment is something we all do, all the time. Informal risk assessments should be undertaken before any task is undertaken

NEXT STEPS

Continue to the Moving and Handling Level 1 eAssessment. This should be completed to demonstrate the required knowledge and understanding and to complete the training. Remember to also familiarise yourself with local procedures.

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