Occupational Physiotherapy

Did you know:

Every day 10 tradies are badly injured at work. That is 3560 tradies a year on workers compensation!
22% of roofers, labourers and plumbers experience back pain, muscle stress and strain from lifting equipment or slips, trips and falls when handling materials.

We don’t want that to be you! August is National Tradies Health Month.

Ensure you have appropriate personal protective equipment to carry out the task. Don’t ignore the pain – visit a qualified physiotherapist.

Physiotherapists are experts in human movement. They understand how your muscles, bones, joints and ligaments work and how injuries happen. Physiotherapists are able to help get you back to work faster.

Australian Physiotherapy Association has combined with Steel Blue to promote National Tradies Health Month. Visit the website here or see the resources below to give you the tools to improve your health and wellbeing.

Here is some helpful Information to give you the tools to help Prevent Injury and Improve your Health:

Preventing Back Pain

Preventing Ankle Sprains

Preventing Knee Injuries

Preventing Neck Pain

Diet, Lifestyle and Wellbeing

Provided by the Australian Physiotherapy Association. More available at www.tradieshealth.com.au.

Services offered by Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy and Snowy Mountains Physiotherapy:

Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy offers occupational physiotherapy services to many types of business in South-East NSW. These services include:

Onsite ergonomic assessment for workstations

A physiotherapist from Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy can provide an on-site assessment of a workers workstation or office setup. During this visit, recommendations for equipment set-up or changes to equipment will be made, and observations and correction of each individuals posture at the workstation will be made. The recommended changes will be summarised in a written report.

Pre-employment assessment

Employers can organise one of our physiotherapists to assess their potential employee’s physical capacity to perform the specified role. The pre-employment assessment will be tailored to specific types of roles or industries. Once completed, the physiotherapist will provide extensive reporting to the employer about capacities and weaknesses, including a risk category outlining how suitable the potential employee is for the role.

Worksite assessments

Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy can attend your workplace to provide an on site assessment of workers in their workplace. A visit can be used to provide ergonomic set-up, identify potential improvements of technique or structure of the duties. Numerous manual handling tasks can be assessed, eg: loading trucks, entering/exiting vehicles, packaging boxes, lifting weights and knife work. On site photos can be used to provide safety posters to prevent future injuries.

Graduated return to work plans

Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy liaise continually with local GP’s and case managers in the development of staged plans to assist injured workers to increase their capacity safely back to a return to pre-injury duties.

Manual handling, risk assessment, training and reporting

At all of our clinics, we are able to provide in house or in clinic training for workers in the theory and practice of safe manual handling.

Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy in Bega has been able to provide a unique and extremely valuable service to the biggest employer in the area, Bega Cheese – providing on-site physiotherapy services since 2006 to their employees, to enable those suffering an injury to remain at work. This initiative has been instrumental in reducing lost time due to soft tissue injuries at Bega Cheese by a staggering 76%. During 2010-11 claims were reduced by more than 40% and lost time hours reduced by almost 4000 on the previous year. Bega Cheese were recently recognised for their 'safety first' intiative by taking out first place at the 2012 Workcover NSW SafeWork Awards in the Best workplace health and safety management system catagory.

Similarly, in Cooma, Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy has an arrangement with Monbeef (a major employer in that area) to provide pre-employment assessments and prompt treatment of workplace injuries.

If you are interested in Sapphire Coast Physiotherapy visiting your workplace to provide ergonomic assessment or pre-employment functional screening assessments for potential employees, please contact Renee in Cooma on 02 6452 4203 or reneep@sapphirephysio.com.au or Naomi in Bega/Merimbula on 02 6492 0023 or naomiw@sapphirephysio.com.au