Some of the thorniest issues in society today lie between public policy and personal responsibility. Recycling plastic is good for the environment and is of course a civic duty. But, according to previous reporting from PBS and NPR, it’s also a status quo that plastic-producing companies themselves have quietly promoted since the 1970s to avoid regulations against single-use plastics by imposing industry responsibilities on consumers.
Could it be possible that poor posture at work or repetitive stress injuries caused by sedentary work are more of a systemic problem than a matter of your personal failings? This thorny, rhetorical and perhaps unanswerable question is at the heart of the ergonomics problem. Fortunately, physiotherapists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia have now examined the effectiveness of ergonomics for workplace health in the most comprehensive way possible. Their results, published Wednesday in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, found that “ergonomic interventions” appear to show “no significant effects on pain, function, recovery, quality of life or work-related outcomes (sick leave) compared to no treatment or usual care.”
“When we pooled the best available trials, ergonomic interventions made little or no difference,” the review’s lead author, UTS physiotherapist Poonam Mehta, said in a statement. Mehta and colleagues reviewed 20 studies on the issue involving 2,478 participants with work-related complaints of the arm, neck, or shoulder (CANS).
“The certainty of this evidence ranges from low to moderate, so this is a clear signal that the case for these interventions is weaker than many people think,” said Mehta, a senior lecturer at the UTS Graduate School of Health.
Simple posture
The Cochrane review by Mehta and his team drew on 13 studies collated for a previous 2013 review, updated with seven new studies and two additional new articles linked to the findings of those 13 earlier studies. Most of this research that the team pooled examined participants with unspecified CANS, but four of these studies focused on specific CANS, such as carpal tunnel syndrome.
From these data, the researchers felt they could say with moderate certainty that ergonomic interventions appeared to cause little or no difference in the duration of sick leave compared to no treatment. They were also convinced that such interventions were no more effective than simply remaining on a waiting list for another form of care.
But the existing literature on ergonomics left them even less confident about whether these solutions, like a standing desk or vertical computer mouse, reduced pain or changed the need for doctor visits.
Part of the problem, according to Mehta’s co-author Peter Stubbs, who is also a physiotherapist at UTS, was simply the possibility of wishful thinking in the design of these past studies. As Stubbs said in a statement, “methodological flaws and high risk of bias degrade confidence in the results.”
Part of the furniture
Rather than simply taking it for granted that ergonomic furniture and training definitively offer no benefit to people facing workplace pain, Mehta hopes his team’s findings will inspire their peers to re-examine the issue more rigorously.
“We would need more evidence to confirm this,” Mehta advised, “because there is not a lot of high-quality research in this area.” For example, no data is currently available on whether or not ergonomic solutions solve workplace problems beyond sick leave, such as (presumably) a participant’s actual job performance or satisfaction.
Mehta and his co-authors, according to Cochrane’s press release, still maintain the possibility that ergonomic strategies “may still have value in specific subgroups, or as part of a broader workplace or rehabilitation program.” Such future findings would certainly comfort all office managers and executives who have already devoted significant corporate resources to fleets of ergonomic chairs, split keyboards, or corporate training sessions on good posture.
“Ergonomic interventions can pose a significant financial burden on organizations,” Mehta noted. “Employers may want to weigh this against cost. »
Gn Health
