Proper Bionomics Found to Reduce Workers' Injuries.

Business/Health Editors

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2001

Dennis Downing, president of Future Industrial Technologies (F.I.T.) and an expert in industrial injury prevention, announced that focusing on "bionomics" has proven to be extremely successful in reducing on-the-job injuries.

"Bionomics," said Downing, "is a term coined to mean how to correctly manage your body while working; 'bio,' meaning life (body), and 'nomics,' meaning to manage."

There is ergonomics, which is literally how to manage work (ergo). It is the science of adapting the physical environment to a worker to lower the risk of injury. There has been a lot of research in this area and, thus, a tremendous amount of money spent by U.S. industries to make environments more user-friendly.

Many companies have benefitted from these interventions. Many, after spending large sums of money on re-engineering, buying new equipment or new work stations, have not experienced the benefits they sought. The difference between ergonomics and bionomics is that the focus is not on the physical environment, per se, but on the proper management of the body; that is the critical difference.

In their attempt to determine how to prevent musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace and why back injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome dominated workers' compensation dollars, F.I.T. looked at how corporate America was training their employees to prevent costly sprain/strain type injuries.

Downing said, "We evaluated the training information being disseminated to the employee, and it was right on (correct posture, use your legs, no twisting, etc). However, we have a company maxim: 'The value of any training is only as good as it is applied.' If there is no (or improper) application of the principles being taught, the training is wanting and ineffective. The employees, observed after these training classes, did not assimilate what was taught into their work or daily home activities. They were not applying it; thus, the workers' compensation costs were unaffected." Thus, the trainings failed.

"We knew one could teach a 12-year-old girl to do a back flip on a 4-inch balance beam, 4 feet above the ground, with perfect form. Why can't we teach someone how to lift a tool box or set up a computer work station correctly?

"It was here that we had a major revelation. As a society, we have never been taught how to use our bodies correctly. This has been observed while training thousands of people in the United States, Canada and Australia. A lack of the basic knowledge of how to use our bodies correctly causes day-to-day innocent stresses that add up over time to cause fatigue, discomfort, pain, and for the unfortunate, injury."

Downing continued, "We realized that our society does not know how to minimize physical stress through proper biomechanics, nor how to eliminate accumulated stress through vocationally based stretching.

"This realization prompted the development of our bionomic training protocols. We created a training workshop that taught people, for the first time in their lives, how to prevent physical stress and how to relieve accumulated physical stress that they would apply on the job. We realized it was not the substance of the training; it was the teaching methodology."

F.I.T.'s training protocols were developed by utilizing the athletic model -- looking at how kids are taught how to swim and comparing it to how we teach people how to prevent injuries. "Imagine teaching a child how to swim with just a video, and then throwing him in the pool," said Downing. "There must be a 'doingness,' a practical aspect as well as a theory. You cannot teach a kinetic activity (lifting, pushing, pulling, keyboarding) with a sedentary activity, like watching a video, listening to an 'expert.'

"This was a major discovery in finding out why past trainings did not work and the key to developing our programs that have proven to produce consistent, sustainable reductions in injuries."

F.I.T., operating since 1992 throughout the United States and Canada, has developed a skilled network of more than 1,100 injury prevention specialists. They provide on-site employee training, called SITTINGSAFE(R), for the office worker, and BACKSAFE(R), for the non-office environment, both aimed at reducing musculoskeletal disorders, such as back injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome.

"We have been fortunate," said Downing, "to work with hundreds of large and small companies to help them while protecting the employees' health, to reduce workers' compensation costs. For example, we have successfully reduced injuries at United Airlines after training 20,000 flight attendants by 63%, and increased production at the Los Angeles County Assessors Office by 20%."