Overview
Keywords: Shoulder; musculoskeletal injury; assessment; tissue exposures; industry collaboration
Timeline: September 2014 - present
Researchers: Meghan Vidt (Principal Investigator, University of Waterloo), Clark Dickerson (University of Waterloo)
Funder: CRE-MSD
Project type: Seed grant
Sector/Workplace type: All
Theme:
Theme
3
Risk
assessment
and
hazard
identification
Background/rationale
Incorporating musculoskeletal loading metrics may improve identification and mitigation of problematic work activites beyond currently available simpler approaches for the shoulder. Occupational shoulder MSDs are common. Currently used ergonomic assessment techniques, including software programs, have substantially simplified shoulders. This is a flaw in successful prevention, as shoulder injury mechanisms are complex and depend on a combination of muscular overload and rapidly changing tissue tolerances, which are largely neglected in strength or aggregate joint approaches. It is anticipated that job task assessments with the advanced biomechanical shoulder model will provide a finer scale upon which to assess different levels of MSD risk in an occupational setting by producing quantitative estimates of physiological demands. The results of this work will provide a foundation for possible further collaboration which will develop a risk index to more meaningfully characterize occupational exposures.
Research question/objectives/methods
The aim of this project is to investigate whether it is possible to better discriminate injury risks between occupational tasks using advanced biomechanical model outputs than when using traditional assessment techniques (e.g. strength anthropometric measures, workplace dimensions)?
This investigation has two phases:
- On-site assessment of work tasks to identify candidate tasks for analysis
- Quantitative assessment of the identified tasks using the research group’s computational musculoskeletal model
Key findings
In progress
Implications for the prevention of MSD
In progress
Knowledge dissemination
In progress